This text is taken from our newsletter “Le Courrier de la Planète” of June 14, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
Are you looking for a simple and effective way to reduce your carbon footprint? Properly recover your refrigeration appliances.
A typical fridge contains greenhouse gases (GHG) equivalent to one tonne of CO2. These gases, halocarbons, are found in the cooling coil and in the insulating foams of the appliances. If they disperse into the atmosphere, emissions greater than that of a plane ticket to Paris go up in smoke.
“Stop leaving your devices on the side of the street! It’s the worst thing you can do from an environmental point of view,” pleads Jules Foisy Lapointe, the general manager of GoRecycle, an organization that recovers appliances on behalf of most major appliance retailers in Quebec.
Le Devoir met Mr. Foisy Lapointe at the ecocentre of Saint-Laurent, in Montreal, where a few devices are piled up in a small warehouse that will be picked up by GoRecycle truckers. A refrigerator, air conditioners and water coolers are waiting to be picked up.
GoRecycle was founded in the spring of 2021 in response to the new Quebec regulation requiring the appliance industry to offer a recovery program. The organization has 278 drop-off points, which are mostly ecocentres, and also manages old appliances picked up by new appliance deliverers. He finances his activities thanks to eco-fees of $30 per fridge.
Above all, GoRecycle ensures that the recycling of devices is done in the rules of the art. In 2021, he collected more than 83,000 devices. The refrigerators went to PureSphera, in Bécancour, which is the only plant in North America to extract gases from refrigerating foams. The smaller devices were dismantled in social reintegration companies. All halocarbons were then destroyed.
Goals to achieve
Even today, a large portion of out-of-service refrigerators are left on the side of the street, where metal collectors pick them up. They sell them to scrap dealers. Nothing ensures that these devices are properly treated, denounces Mr. Foisy Lapointe. “At GoRecycle, we realized that many scrap metal workers claimed to process gases, but that was completely false,” he says.
Even the ecocentres, which obviously accepted old refrigerating appliances before last year, did not all send their harvest to one of the rare factories capable of destroying halocarbons. Much of the loot ended up in the hands of scrap dealers.
GoRecycle will now have to comply with the targets imposed by the Quebec regulations: by 2024, 70% of devices reaching the end of their life will have to be recovered. The organization, which considers that this target is “completely absurd” because it is too high, is taking steps with the government to lower it.
“We want to progress, but it’s impossible to reach 70% in three years,” says Foisy Lapointe. We are currently making financial reserves to prepare to pay the penalties. »
The organization therefore implores the public to make an effort. It plans to salvage 140,000 devices this year: the equivalent of taking 50,000 gas-powered vehicles off the road for a year.