The agreement is a response to the EU’s Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS) regulations which come into force in January 2002 and will see CFC gases having to be recovered from fridge and freezer insulation foam before the equipment can be recycled. Costs of fridge recycling could be in the range 20-50 and it is still unclear what funding will be provided from the Treasury or the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to local authorities to meet the costs.
The regulations will see fridges classifed as hazardous waste and they will have to be recycled in specialist facilities. At present the UK does not have any capacity to remove and safely dispose of the CFCs in refrigerator foam. EMR will provide storage capacity for fridges until it has installed the necessary recycling equipment which it is expected to buy on the Continent.
Fridge recyclers are currently waiting for the government to set standards for the removal of CFCs from foam in fridges before installing capital-intensive recycling facilities. DEFRA has said that these should be finalised by the end of the month.
Specialist
SITA will send its fridges to one of several specialist fridge recycling plants EMR is planning to set up. EMR hopes to establish one mobile and six static fridge recycling plants to handle the one million fridges it currently shreds a year. EMR will granulate the fridges in a controlled environment so to capture and destroy the 75-80% of ozone-depleting substances contained in the foam insulation.
Paul Dumpleton, SITA’s recycling manager, said: “It is important to offer our clients a viable solution for handling fridges. This situation has been created with very little notice and can only be resolved if all parties act responsibly. EMR is a natural partner in this project.”
Andrew Mason, development director at EMR, said: “The ODS regulations require immediate action from all stakeholders in the fridge recycling chain in order to minimise the burden facing local authorities and others. EMR can offer crucial storage space for fridges and the very latest in recycling technology – and we’ll do so at realistic prices.”
EMR is Europe’s largest recycling group, handling over 8.5 million tonnes of metal-based material per year and more than 60% of such arisings in the UK. The company operates a rail-linked network of 60 recycling site.
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