Before the advent of this amazing technology, it was next to impossible to recycle fridges. Disposal of bridges into the rubbish pit would again be an accident waiting to happen-if you are environmentally sensitive like we are. This is attributed to the fact that tossing large amounts of plastic and metal into earth won’t serve mother earth best, neither will the toxic gases that are normally associated with the fridge’s working mechanism. I mean this would further deteriorate the ozone layer and make things worse for us.
Now, let me introduce you to Brian Conners, the president and chief operating officer of ARCA Advanced Processing, which runs a hulking 40-foot shredder that can chomp down one two-door refrigerator-freezer to chip-sized bits every 50 seconds, or 600 of them per day. Mr Conners himself admits that he likes breaking things up…ok, whatever…still satisfies the maxim that people like doing what their hearts fall for.
In the US alone, about 9 million refrigerators and freezers are junked out every year. What used to happen before was that they were recycled for metals at auto shredders just like cars, but this had its own consequences.. The plastics and the insulating form, suffused with blowing agents like the ozone depleting Freon and other potent greenhouse gases ended up in landfills and pits, letting these gases into the atmosphere. According to Conners, the shredder can recover about 95% of the insulating foam and the noxious gasses in it.
With the partnership between GE and Conners’ joint-venture partner, Appliance Recycling Centers of America, that started in 2009. General electric asks its customers who come to buy fridges from their Home depot or its distributors to bring their old ones. It then ships them to Conners for recycling and since last summer, the shredder has recycled 100,000 refrigerators and fridges, saving 5.5 million pounds of foam and plastics from landing into landfills. Pellets of the “degassed” foam, for example, can be used as fuel in cement manufacturing. “GE is the first and only appliance manufacturer to implement the EPA’s Responsible Appliance Disposal Program,” as per the words of its vice president for ecomagination, Mark Vachon.
Conners has his own plant in Philadelphia that handles all brands of old fridges from the eastern states between Vermont and North Carolina. The first step in the recycling process is removal of cords, shelves, the refrigerant and oil from the compressor. This is normally done by manual workers. Then the conveyor belt takes the empty fridge shell inside a sealed vacuum chamber where large knives cut it into bits that are 1.5 inches long. The different materials are then mechanically sorted out-air suction hoods pull off the form, magnets take out the steel and eddy current separator deal with the aluminium and copper. What remains is plastics that is but in large bags and removed too.
What about the gases? The machines has an automatic mechanism to pump out the harmful gases from the shredding chamber, cools them down with liquid nitrogen to -900C so that the gases are liquefied to enable bottling and finally shipping to a special incinerator in Arkansas for proper destruction.
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