Since after 3 years you're beyond the break-even point due to energy use, the old refrigerator should be disposed of rather than given away.
By keeping it in service, it's making somebody poorer. Especially since the person receiving the free 30 year old power hungry refrigerator and keeping it for a decade is the least likely to afford a replacement.
Somebody already disadvantaged will eventually be stuck with structurally higher bills and find it harder to save due to this.
Those that's not your problem it's more a government policy problem.
Poor people can make their own decisions about whether to use an old fridge or not. They know much more about their own situation than you do. You are not well situated to make these sorts of decisions for them.
There's an old expression that I actually lived out: "Poor people have poor ways."
When I was living well below the poverty level, I used whatever resource that was available as long as it was legal. I was given a chest type freezer that was made somewhere in the early 60's, but was in good working order, since it was owned by a person in the HVAC field. It wasn't very efficient, but I needed the freezer space. (Since we didn't have air conditioning, I could afford the electric usage.) Most poor people make decisions based on whatever works, not if it's the best option, because of the lack of money.
But do they? Does the person taking on that broken refrigerator know that it has a flaw that makes it consume so much electricity that in 3 years the power use alone would cost more than buying a brand new refrigerator?
(ok, in this case they gave it to someone that needs a temporary 'fridge during renovations, so it's kind of a moot point, they aren't just giving it to "poor people")
Probably not any better than the last two LG fridges which both broke due to compressor issues, causing me to lose $1k of food each time.
In one case, during the high summer, I didn't notice one was slowly getting warmer. I had constant bowel problems, because I was eating rotten mayonnaise. This was compounded by the fact that I bought fancy spicy mayonnaise, which I'd never tasted before, which masked the rotten flavour.
So -- my lessons learned, never by LG horrible fridges again, and keep an analog thermometer, which I bought for $5, in the fridge.
(General FYI, LG has had more than one class action law suit because of their compressors, and, they even make it very hard to obtain replacements. Evil bastards.)
My point is, you should take care with any fridge, new or old.
Canadian dollars, so 1.45x USD, and some expensive meats.
Lamb is 3x the price of beef, for example. Name brand bacon is not too bulky and thin, 10 bucks for 500g. Some fish is expensive too. It adds up surprisingly fast.
I plan on putting some LoRaWAN temp sensors in my fridges/freezers to alert me if the temp goes out of spec for very long. (As soon as YoLink has their Local Hub available and functioning with Home Assistant.)
I doubt you'd be able to get a signal through from inside the fridge. I made a Home Assistant "food safety" dashboard and alerts. I found two challenges:
* Connecting to the outside world. I didn't go wireless because a fridge/freezer cavity is basically a Faraday cage, because I didn't want to deal with replacing batteries, and because high humidity + low temp = wet, sad microcontroller. And even a "flat" 4-conductor telephone cord disturbed the magnetic seal enough that there was a noticeable gap. I ended up buying a 4-contact, 1mm pitch, 200mm flat flexible cable to run across the seal. I separated the contacts with a utility knife, soldering them to other cables on both sides. I also heatshrinked the conductors individually and the whole junction together for strain relief. Then I superglued it into place. And 4 conductors is enough for ground, supply voltage, and either TX/RX or 1-Wire+unused.
* Getting a reading that matches what foods actually experience rather than the air temperature. The latter fluctuates a lot more when you open/close the door or depending on what the defrost/compressor is doing. I ended up buying waterproof 1-Wire temperature sensors (elecrow sells them for $1.20 each + reasonable shipping), 4 oz plastic bottles, cable glands, and propylene glycol (relatively safe antifreeze, though I wouldn't chug it). I drilled holes in the lids for the glands to run the sensors in, then closed the bottles up while immersed in the solution. Cheap DIY buffered temperature probe.
I currently measure buffered temperature, air temperature, and humidity, but really only the buffered temperature matters.
For the readings, I only really care about catching compressor failure within hours, as opposed to say, days, so for a freezer that's normally set to -18, I figure I'll just do something like "alert if temperature remains above -14 for >2 hours." Of my 4 fridges/freezers, only one has auto-defrost, so I guess I'll have to take that into account there.
The YoLink system works great! I was able to spot an issue causing my chest freezer to very slowly increase in temp (roughly -10 to +10 F in a month) and move the contents before losing the food. Across 5 temperature sensors, I've needed to replace batteries on 2 in 16 months.
There are loads of 'put them in the fridge/freezer' temp sensors out there, made just for this. I did buy lithium AA batteries (which work down to -40C even) for the sensor end.
My thoughts are, these things are special built, and only wake every few minutes or so to burst send. Batteries tend to last a couple of years (but with the lithium ones!), and I get beeeeps from the receiver if it dies.
(Not knocking your solution, it gives you more flexibility)
I saw a few that were wired with cords that seemed more intrusive than the telephone cord I tried, so I went my own way. And most of them didn't seem to be something I could connect to Home Assistant.
Well amazon has endless examples of wireless working fine. However, as I said, you get more flexibility with your own solution (like using Home Assistant)
My z-wave temperature sensor works inside my refrigerator. It's a stainless steel refrigerator with no window or icemaker in the door. Not sure how the signal gets out but it works.
Stainless is not a very good conductor. If it were aluminum or copper there’d be a problem but you can literally bury a bluetooth transmitter in a 16-gauge steel box with very little attenuation. I’ve done so at work.
Good news for you, their local hub is available and I currently have fridge and freezer (and a few other sensors) hooked up to home assistant via it right now.
Please. I've definitely smelled off food, and of course don't eat it. The mayo in question was some weird spicy stuff, and it didn't smell or taste bad.
You can borrow a watt meter at my local public library. I'm not saying the average person would have the knowledge to think of doing this, but it's not out of reach.
As another person has noted, this wasn't quite the scenario - they had renovations, but you know that now.
I had to renovate a kitchen a while ago and I got into the habit of living without a fridge or a freezer. It came as a surprise that this was possible, and the article is interesting because I now know how much money is saved. I can compare this to food wasted due to a lack of refrigeration, and, I am still seeing the advantages of no fridge. Such heresy!
It depends on what you eat, but I don't have time for most things that need to go in the fridge. If it isn't in the fridge at the supermarket then it doesn't need to be in the fridge at home is the general rule. Oddly I have lower food waste with no fridge, but there are annoyances such as not being able to buy a big bag of (say) carrots, and having to resupply twice a week. On the whole though, my food is a lot fresher than when I had a fridge, plus I have upped my nutrition game to not have this food morgue of things that 'want to kill me'. I joke, but there were a lot of ready meals, sticky puddings and much else that might as well been 'raw trans fats'. I went from this to a jute bag, which seems to keep most vegetables fresh enough for long enough.
What is also interesting about fridges is how quickly they turn into some cave of mold even if they are kept nice and clean. Turn that electricity off, take everything out, and, unless you keep the door open, some true horrors will be found in there a week later.
In the article this was not a like for like efficiency test by any stretch of the imagination. Over time it is the door seal that goes and, if that isn't tight then it will just be sucking moisture out of the air to make a huge ice block, hence compressor on the whole time.
The next problem is that some fridges have vents with fans in them, sometimes forward facing at the base. These get to collect lots of dust, hair and other debris, making them ineffective.
Despite these test methodology issues, in the real world people will be replacing an old fridge that has a dodgy seal with a new fridge that works as the manufacturer intended.
Regarding your point of the poor, do you have any idea how many people in the UK do not have a fridge, or access to one? Allegedly it is in the millions, which I find hard to believe, but have not dismissed out of hand. There are so many people living in sub-standard rented accommodation in a shoebox sized 'studio flat' (or worse). Proper housing is required before these people can get a fridge. The UK is allegedly a first world country, but with huge inequalities when it comes to property and income.
I suspect that in much of the world not having a fridge is no big deal, if you are living off the land rather than processed foods and processed animal products then why would no fridge be hardship?
It is amazing how many assumptions there are regarding fridges, the need for them and whether life is 'disadvantaged' without one. Until relatively recent times nobody had fridges yet we somehow survived, albeit with some mortality issues.
By keeping it in service, it's making somebody poorer. Especially since the person receiving the free 30 year old power hungry refrigerator and keeping it for a decade is the least likely to afford a replacement.
Somebody already disadvantaged will eventually be stuck with structurally higher bills and find it harder to save due to this.
Those that's not your problem it's more a government policy problem.