"What should we do with that old fridge?"

In July, the German public television network ARD broadcast a detailed report on fridge recycling in its magazine programme PlusMinus

Most Germans take their old fridges to local waste collection centres in the belief that the fridge will then be recycled in an environmentally friendly way.

Although German legislation specifies how the 36 million fridges still containing CFCs are to be treated, enquiries by the PlusMinus team showed that the monitoring and checking procedures are still patchy - with huge quantities of CFCs escaping to the atmosphere from poor quality recycling procedures.

The ARD magazine programme PlusMinus recently broadcast an informative feature on the fridge recycling situation in Germany.

According to information received by the RAL Quality Assurance Association, the TV report has sparked numerous discussions among market stakeholders.

It was generally welcomed that an issue of such key importance for climate protection had been brought back into the public eye.

There also appears now to be an attempt, particularly in the case of the German licensing and monitoring authorities, to determine the real quality of the fridge recycling services currently being offered.

The numerous indications of low quality recycling that have followed the implementation of the German Electrical and Electronic Equipment Act (ElektroG) have led to renewed interest in the question of how much CFC is actually recovered when end-of-life fridge and freezer appliances are recycled.

The RAL Quality Assurance Association has been involved in discussions at both federal and regional levels and has consistently argued that the only reliable means of establishing the efficiency of the various recycling technologies in use is to compile a complete mass balance of the CFC input and output streams.

The legislation drafted so far and the quality requirements specified in invitations-to-tender issued by the appliance manufacturers offer only a very limited guarantee that all the CFCs in waste refrigeration equipment will be recovered.

RAL has nevertheless been pleased to observe that the federal and regional governments have taken the first important steps in the right direction.

The RAL Quality Assurance Association is calling for a comprehensive analysis and review of the quality of the fridge recycling methods currently being used in Germany.

The results should then be used to establish binding quality requirements and efficient monitoring procedures for fridge recycling operations.

Any moves in this direction at the national or regional level can only be welcomed and should be supported by all stakeholders in the fridge recycling market.

But there is also a European dimension to this problem.

There are at least another 200 million fridges and freezers containing CFCs in EU households and the question naturally arises as to the treatment and recycling situation in other EU member states.

There is still no real overview and assessment of the actual quality of the fridge recycling plants operating in most European countries.

According to RAL Secretary Christoph Becker it is high time this situation changed.

The PlusMinus report (available in German only) can be viewed online.

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