Following the liquidation of Manchester city council's former fridge contractor Britannia Import Export, around 100,000 waste fridges have been left in Oldham and Trafford Park (see letsrecycle.com story).
” It has only been possible to reach this position through the hard work of all the parties involved. “
– Bill Darbyshire, Environment Agency
The Environment Agency has been working with landowners, local authorities, Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority, Greater Manchester Fire Service and Trafford and Oldham borough councils to set up a clean-up fund to clear the site. About 850,000 has been raised in total to tackle the fridge mountains.
Bill Darbyshire, Environment Agency environment manager for North Manchester, said: “It has only been possible to reach this position through the hard work of all the parties involved. From the beginning the Agency's prime concern has been to make sure the fridges at all sites are disposed of properly and with no extra impact on the environment.
With clearance work underway we have taken a major step towards achieving that goal and this is excellent news for everyone involved in making it happen,” he added.
To date, 40,000 fridges have been cleared from the sites, and with the money allocated yesterday are working to clear the remainder as early as possible in 2005.
Isolated
Mr Morley said: “This is an exceptional and isolated case. Defra has stepped in to help clean up the site as the risk of polluting the environment and threat of more fires are real. I would encourage other relevant stakeholder to support the fund so the site can be cleared quickly and in an environmentally sound way.
He continued: “The situation in Manchester is by no means representative of the situation across the country. We throw away 2.3 million fridges a year and have capacity to treat 3 million, indeed the backlog of fridges in most cases has been cleared with fridges being treated straight away without the need of storage.”
Contract
M Baker Recycling, which won the contract to clear around 3,000 fridges at the Stock Lane site in Chadderton, Oldham, has already begun clearing the fridges. The fridge specialist started clearing the fridges on December 14 and has so far reprocessed almost 900 units. A spokeswoman for the company said that it hoped to complete the processing by the middle of January.
M Baker also said that it was talking to the Environment Agency with a view to working on the other sites in Manchester.
Trafford
Fridges piled up at Manchester's Trafford Park are being recycled by logistics company Wincanton. Contracted by landowner Brixton Estates, Wincanton will begin operations this week, working until April 2005 to clear over 40,000 end of life refrigeration units from the site.
About 3,500 fridges a week will go to Wincanton's recycling plant at Billingham, near Middlesbrough, and will also be processed at its CFC re-packaging facility at Widnes.
Gordon Scott, industrial managing director at Wincanton, said: “We are able to provide Brixton with service options that simply can’t be found elsewhere. In some cases, fridges are still being shipped to mainland Europe or are being processed to lower standards, but Wincanton is continuing to provide sustainable solutions here in the UK.”
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