The FINANCIAL -- GE, in collaboration with Appliance
Recycling Centers of America, reached a milestone of 100,000
refrigerators and freezers recycled through North America’s only UNTHA
Recycling Technology System.
ARCA’s URT machine, a unique 40-foot-tall engineering marvel, recovers approximately 95 percent of the insulating foam in refrigerators and freezers, reducing landfill waste and greenhouse gas and ozone depleting substance emissions.
As a result of this milestone, an estimated 5.5 million pounds of refrigerator and freezer material has been diverted from U.S. landfills. As the General Electric Company reported, eighty-nine percent of the material has been recovered for reuse for new products, and 11 percent is being used as fuel in cement manufacturing.
“This achievement represents a significant advance in how appliances are recycled in the U.S.,” said Brian Conners, president and COO of ARCA Advanced Processing (AAP). “As a result of our work with GE Appliances, AAP has made great strides toward achieving our goal of zero landfill appliance recycling.”
Roughly 9 million refrigerators are disposed of annually in the U.S., and only a fraction of those have the insulating foam in their walls and doors recycled. While 90 percent of used refrigerators in the U.S. are shredded for their metal, the remaining foam and other materials typically go to a landfill. If the foam from all of those refrigerators was processed through the URT system, the greenhouse gas emissions avoided would be equivalent to the annual CO2-e emissions of more than 2.4 million cars on U.S. roads.
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