After you've donated your old appliance to
the Great Refrigerator Roundup, it goes through several
recycling steps before it's ready for repurposing. Read on to
find out how your fridges are recycled!
1. Decommissioning
2. Plastic and Aluminum Removal
1,500 appliances arrive every week at ARCA Canada Appliance
Recycling (ARCA). In 2008, more than 100,000 fridges were
decommissioned.
Loose plastic and aluminum parts are removed and sorted into
piles, then baled or crushed.
3. Refrigerant Removal
4. Compressor Oil Remover
Specialized hoses are attached to the fridges to extract
refrigerant. The mercury switches on freezers are removed and
disposed of. Then, portable equipment is used to extract the
refrigerant.
Fridges are laid on a "tipper table" where the compressor oil
is drained into drums.
The oil is burned to provide heat in cement processing
5. Crushing the Shell
6. Metal Blocks
A baling machine crushes the remaining metal into
blocks.
These metal blocks are then sent to a steel mill for
reprocessing.
