LG opens to the refrigerator door to doors within doors

Food wastage costs Aussie households $500–1000 each a year (or $4 billion in total) according to research* by LG, whose solution is better food organisation though a door-in-door fridge design that allows access to popular chilled items without impacting the temperature in the main body of the fridge.

Intended to store frequently accessed food stuffs – drinks, milk, margarine, jams – items close to their use-by date, or leftovers that need to be consumed within a short period, the outer door on LG’s three new ‘Door-in-Door’ models opens onto a cavity that, while cooled from the main fridge compartment, is sufficiently separate to keep warmer air from affecting chill levels inside the fridge.With more consistent temperatures, food stored within the main body of the fridge is less prone to spoiling.

Advancing the cause of less food wastage, the crisper section provides a plastic top plate with an ‘eggshell’ pattern that LG claims helps trap condensed moisture from fruit and veg, rather than having it – and the bacteria it accumulates – fall back into the food area. The crisper compartments also accommodate three temperature zones: -1° Celsius for meats, 1° Celsius for deli goods and  3° Celsius for vegetables.

LG’s Door-in-Door models include a 650 litre side-by-side fridge as well as 730 and 907 litre French door models. Around 100 litres larger than the current largest French door model in Oz, the latter (GR-D907SL) is one big-arse fridge.

If food was water, for example, and you could fill every cavity in the 907SL, you would be just 93 kilos short of one tonne of food. One. Tonne.

The huge capacity of it and its 730 litre brother is down to the use of a thinner, denser insulation material – which allows the fridge walls to be made up to 13mm thinner than regular 45mm walls – plus a new approach to ice-makers.

Many models integrate the these into the main body of the fridge, and supply ice via a hose to the dispensing unit on the door, but LG’s French door models cleverly integrate the ice unit into the door itself (the left door, as opposed to the right-side door-in-door). The upshot is that, while external dimensions remain a conventional 903mm (wide), interior space is enhanced.

The key to keeping everything cool, of course, is the compressor, and a two-part linear compression system is at work in these LGs. With less moving parts than conventional three-part systems (natch), LG says these fridges last longer and run more quietly, and backs up its claim with a 10 year parts warranty.

There are some thoughtful design touches worth mentioning too.

Internal lighting on the French door models is LED, with the lighting panels covered by plastic top-plates featuring the same eggshell pattern found in the crisper, for minimising condensation. The water and ice dispenser accommodates tall (33cm) glasses; the display icons and operation buttons are large and LED lit, and a child lock features means kids can be denied the fun of drenching the floor with ice water.

The freezer section is divided into three compartments of varying depth, so there’s little chance of burying your frozen goods beyond the point of retrieval. Gone too, is the need for a brute force tug-of-war with the seal on the freezer drawer – a light downward push on the handle releases the suction for quick and easy ingress to the ice-cream.

LG’s Door-in-Door GR-D907SL is available in September and costs $4599. Having it plumbed into your kitchen’s water supply – essential for water dispenser and ice making operations – will cost around $500. Other models will become available by November.

*Research was conducted in August 2012 and commissioned by LG Electronics. Research was carried out by Pure Profile and surveyed 1,250 Australians nationally. LG’s Fridge Habits Report highlights:

 – We end up binning over 17 million  items a week due to our  jumbled fridges, that’s the equivalent to an item for every  resident in New South Wales twice over!
– Almost half of Aussies (45%) wish their fridge was better  organised, and half admit they find it difficult to locate what  they need when it needs a tidy
2 in 5 (38%) claim they often forget about items stored at  the back
– A quarter (23%) mistakenly double buy items because they’ve forgotten what is in their fridge
– 58% say their refrigerator door is opened on average around 30 times a day trying to find items
– Half of Aussies throw food out at least once a week because they have forgotten about it, binning on average 1-3 items a week
– Despite loving to entertain, Australians are not fulfilling their full cooking potential as only 1 in 25 can confidently claim to know what items are in their fridge and,
  1 in 5 concede that their fridge is regularly overstocked