What Are Fridges Made Of?

Main Body

• The main body of a refrigerator, its outer cabinet and door, consists of either steel sheet metal or aluminum. Sheet metal -- thin, flat strips of material used in many manufacturing processes -- often provides the raw material for the inner cabinet, also. Some manufacturers feed a large coil of sheet metal into the production machinery, while others cut the sheets to size before proceeding to make the body.

Insulation

• Refrigerator manufacturers fill the space between the outer and inner cabinets with insulating material, such as fiberglass or polyfoam. The effectiveness of fiberglass insulation declines significantly when leaks in the refrigerator soak into the insulation. Most modern refrigerators use polyfoam, or rigid foam, a type of insulation derived from petroleum that doesn't retain moisture. Avoiding wet insulation can save on the energy costs of running your refrigerator. The savings can reach up to $200 per year, according to the University of Wisconsin.

Interior

• The interior compartments of a refrigerator, such as a vegetable bin or an egg tray, usually consist of pre-formed plastic that the manufacturer purchases from a supplier. Also, the interior cabinet is sometimes made of plastic rather than metal. The various parts of the cooling system, such as the compressor and the condenser, are made from aluminum, copper or a metal alloy. The tubing usually consists of copper since it's strong but can still bend.

Refrigerant

• One of the key materials in any refrigerator, the refrigerant, comes in gas or liquid rather than solid form. Commonly called freon, the typical refrigerant was an ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gas until 1995. After 1995, a different type of freon that poses less of a threat to the environment than CFCs became standard. Even this newer category of freon, however, remains a potentially dangerous greenhouse gas. In 2006 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency created a program, called Responsible Appliance Disposal, that partners with various local governments, utilities and other organizations to safely dispose of dangerous chemicals in old refrigerators and other appliances.