Big chill in fridge recycling. (Waste Disposal).

A new regulation requiring the recovery of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) from refrigerators has caused the United Kingdom to adopt new control procedures and build new recycling facilities on very short notice. The United Kingdom disposes of about 2.5 million consumer fridges and half a million larger commercial fridges each year. From a handling process that saw 40% of discarded fridges still in working order exported to developing countries and the rest degassed and recycled as scrap metal, the nation is moving quickly toward recycling all fridges domestically and controlling all related forms of ozone-depleting substances for proper disposal.

The stage for change was set by the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which identified CFCs and HCFCs as ozone-depleting substances. In response, the European Commission adopted Regulation 2037/2000, which requires members of the European Union to remove all such substances from refrigeration equipment before it is scrapped.

CFCs and HCFCs are found in two components of fridges. About 20-25% is gaseous, mixed with oils and used in piping as a coolant. The rest is used as a propellant in the foam insulation inside the fridge body and door. Most manufacturers stopped using CFCs as refrigerants in the mid-1990s, but HCFCs continued to be used as a propellant for several years after. The coolant form has always been removed before recycling the metal, but until recently there were no U.K. scrap facilities capable of capturing the CFCs and HCFCs in the foam.

Regulation 2037/ 2000 was issued in June 2000, with a compliance date for domestic fridges of 1 January 2002. But questions over the extent and means of compliance dragged on for a year before the commission clarified that all forms of CFCs and HCFCs must be removed and treated as hazardous waste, usually by incineration. With initial confusion over who would recycle the fridges and where they could be stored, news stories surfaced of farmers finding old fridges dumped on their property.

At the same time, to clarify fridge handling procedures, the U.K. Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the U.K. Environment Agency issued guidelines for temporary storage and processing to local authorities and recycling companies. They also encouraged several scrap metal companies to set up properly equipped facilities, and facilitated the export of some fridges to Germany, which has the recycling capacity to handle them.

Getting new fridge recycling plants capable both of capturing the CFCs and HCFCs to a suitable standard and of scrapping the metal and other components has been the most pressing issue. The German company SEG is now operating two mobile plants in the United Kingdom, and fixed plants will be running by summer in North London, South Wales, and the Liverpool area. DEFRA estimates that about 10-12 such plants will be needed to work through the fridge backlog and make the country self-sufficient.

European Metal Recycling runs the North London facility, which can store large numbers of units and process about 300,000 per year. As a major European recycling corporation, they see grounds for more expansion as the market for scrap metal and for CFC/HCFC processing evolves.

Ozone Friends, a London community service group, is feeling other impacts of the regulation. Executive director Mike Jenn says the group once made money by extracting and reselling refrigerant gases from discarded fridges. They also refurbished the units for sale at discount in low-income communities. Jenn says 10% of all fridges could be reused, but the new system makes this business no longer economical. However, Ozone Friends has developed a new business hauling fridges to storage areas or recyclers (retailers no longer pick up old fridges in exchange for new, and local authorities generally do not accept commercial waste). The group may expand into offering to remove the refrigerant and cut the fridges into easily transportable pieces.