RAL has written letters to each of the 25 EU Member State governments requesting their views on the interpretation of the European WEEE Directive with respect to the recycling of fridges.
” RAL believes that Europe must have a unified approach to treating waste refrigeration appliances that contain hydrocarbons.“
– RAL Quality Assurance Association
The association – which is pushing its own quality mark for the demanufacture of refrigeration equipment containing environmentally harmful substances – believes there could be a loophole in the WEEE Directive.
The major question that RAL raises is whether hydrocarbons contained in waste fridges and freezers have to be completely recovered before disposal.
The Directive brings in treatment requirements for separately collected waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) along with new collection and recycling targets. But RAL claims that the legislation has a weakness with respect to the collection of hydrocarbon coolants from fridges.
The quality assurance association interprets Annex II, section 1 of the WEEE Directive as requiring CFCs, HCFCs, HFCs and HCs to be removed from separately collected WEEE.
However, section 2 of the Annex – which states that components of WEEE collected separately have to have ozone-depleting or greenhouse gases properly extracted and destroyed –”weakens or even invalidates the provisions of section 1″, according to RAL.
Emission
RAL says that because section 2 contains no explicit reference to hydrocarbons (HCs), it can be interpreted as permitting the emission of these substances into the environment. It adds that some hydrocarbons used in fridge systems are liquids and not gases at room temperature – and the section only refers to “gases”.
The association believes that the potential loophole in the Directive could undermine investment being put into fridge recycling plants that can recover all substances contained in fridge cooling circuits and foams.
In a statement, it said: “RAL believes that Europe must have a unified approach to treating waste refrigeration appliances that contain hydrocarbons.
“For this reason RAL would be very interested to know whether in the opinion of European ministries… all fridges and freezers containing hydrocarbons have to be treated together with those containing CFCs, HCHCs and HFCs and that the hydrocarbons have to be recovered and then subjected to further treatment or disposal,” RAL said.
Letsrecycle.com is holding a special conference on the way forward for waste electronics on October 12. For more details see the letsrecycle.com events page
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