After you've donated your old appliance to the Fridge & Freezer Pick Up program, it goes through several recycling steps before it's ready for repurposing. Read on to find out how your fridges and freezers are recycled!
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.
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.
A baling machine crushes the remaining metal into blocks.
These metal blocks are then sent to a steel mill for reprocessing.