Fridges and freezers require specialist dismantling due to the gases they contain, which can be harmful to the environment if not disposed of safely, but three of the UK’s 10 full-scale processing plants have closed in the last 12 months.
The three closures – due to a fire, bankruptcy and a change of use – have been compounded by this year’s heat waves, as the remaining plants cannot operate above 30 degrees Celsius.
Industry body the Environmental Services Association said this year’s closures had ended up “knocking out capacity suddenly” and executive director Jacob Hayler said:
“The result is that capacity is now constrained nationally until facilities can be brought back online or new capacity is permitted and developed.”
Fridges from the UK are now being exported to Europe to meet demand, with only one more UK processing plant due to open next year.
Funding for processing relies on the companies that make white goods, who must register with a compliance scheme and tell them how many tonnes of appliances they sell per year, then the scheme collects the same weight of material and coordinates disposal.
The recycling of white goods is handled by 15 producer compliance schemes, who coordinate the collection, recycling and disposal of units from the UK, increasingly via European processing plants.
The largest of these compliance schemes is not-for-profit Ecogenesys, which works with about 85 councils in the UK, and is supporting the development of new UK fridge processing infrastructure.
Ecogenesys chief executive Graeme Milne said European processing plants would provide a temporary stop-gap but the UK needed more processing capacity in the long-term, adding: “The UK fridge recycling sector has faced exceptional pressures this summer, but we expect the situation to begin to ease as the seasonal peak passes.”
John Redmayne, the managing director of another compliance scheme, the European Recycling Platform, said the UK is “facing a genuine capacity crunch” on recycling old fridges, adding the industry consensus “points to a six to twelve month recovery”.
The bottleneck in the disposal of white goods has led to fears of increased flytipping as the government starts a major crackdown on illegal waste dumps.
Country Land and Business Association president Gavin Lane said finding a flytipped fridge dumped in a field was “a farmer’s nightmare”.
“It can cause hours of disruption, stress, and clean-up bills running into the thousands,” he said, calling on the government to get the system working.
One of England’s 11 so-called illegal “super sites”, the Kidlington dump of about 22,000 tonnes of waste in Oxfordshire has been cleaned up this week – but at a cost of £6m to the public purse.
The government is now targeting organised crime gangs, who are behind hundreds of illegal dumps are operating across England, to seize assets bought with the proceeds of crime, as well as hiking fines from £300 to £5,000.