Britain tries to put cap on self-cooling drink can

Britain will today urge European Union nations to unite in trying to find ways to ban a new, self-cooling drink can which could cause global warming.

The new design, being shown off by an American company at a trade exhibition in Singapore this week, chills the contents of a can at room temperature in less than two minutes, at the press of a button.

But in doing so it releases a gas which is over 1,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide - the principal man-made greenhouse gas - at trapping heat in the Earth's lower atmosphere. It is expected to go into production later this year.

At a Council of Ministers meeting in Luxembourg today and tomorrow, Michael Meacher, the minister for the environment, will ask the European Commission and the other 14 environment ministers to look into what scope there is for banning imports and for outlawing production of the can.

The device, developed by the Joseph Company in California, is essentially an aerosol can inside a drinks can. When a button on the bottom of the can is pressed, the liquid inside the aerosol is vented into the air over the next 90 seconds. That lowers the temperature in the aerosol container, which then cools the liquid in the can.

The refrigerant liquid used in the aerosol is HFC 134a, one of the most powerful man-made greenhouse gases. It was developed as an ozone-friendly alternative to chlorofluorocar- bons (CFCs). If the self-chilling cans won a significant market share the resulting emissions could speed up the rate of climate change and sea level rise.

Mr Meacher said the Government would try to block manufacture in Britain. "If we allow a gas which is so potent in producing global warming we are completely undermining international efforts to overcome this cause of global warming," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "The fact is, if the self-chilling cans ... captured, say 10 per cent of the UK market in [the year] 2000, we estimate that they would produce emissions equivalent to 43.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide - that is over half the projected reduction in UK carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2000. So how can we be asking industry and individuals to act responsibly in taking every action they can to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and then allow one manufacturer to negate half of that effort?"

ICI is one of a few large chemical companies making HFC 134a for use in refrigeration and air conditioning. Yesterday it said that it would not supply the product for use in the chiller cans.