SENS International : CLIMATE PROTECTION BY RECYCLING

Up to now Brazil has not had a suitable recycling infrastructure for refrigeration appliances containing CFCs. The Brazilian authorities and environmental associations therefore welcome the Swiss Climate Protection Initiative. Cabreúva is ideally suited for the establishment of the pioneering project in view of its excellent logistics location. The small town of scarcely 40,000 inhabitants is located in the immediate vicinity of numerous large agglomerations in the federal state of São Paulo and is situated close to the orbital motorway around São Paulo. It is expected that as much as 50% of the old appliances to be recycled will come from nearby agglomerations. Also in the immediate vicinity are numerous raw material processors for products from the recycling plant.

At the recycling plant being built and operated by Indústria Fox in Cabreúva, both coolants containing CFCs and CFC propellants from insulation layers are being reclaimed and destroyed. The latest technologies are being used to build the plant. Harmful substances contained in old appliances are separated and fractioned into different raw materials and prepared for further use in the raw material economy. The project involves a complete take-back system from collection through to logistics and then to the environmentally compatible recycling process.

The recycling plant works with a three-stage process during which the refrigerators are stripped down into recyclable raw material fractions and the CFCs extracted and then destroyed. More than 90% of the materials contained in the old appliances are channelled back into the raw materials cycle or into the industrial recycling network. Harmful substances such as mercury and CFCs are rendered harmless – by means of the technologies used in the project, over 95% of the greenhouse gases in old appliances can be demonstrably extracted and destroyed.

By the environmentally sound recycling of the cooling appliances as well the protection of the ozone layer, the plant in Cabreúva is triggering extensive ecological development impetuses. Furthermore, with the creation of a take-back system, an economic basis for collection and logistics services is established. For one thing, integrating the street collectors makes sense in terms of using and expanding existing collection structures while at the same time the collectors are made aware of the environmental problems associated with the disposal of old refrigeration appliances. Technology partnerships, which are to be facilitated between European plant builders and Brazilian machine manufacturers through the project, complete the holistic development approach of the Swiss Climate Protection Initiative SCPI.