Refrigerators (Hansard, 12 March 2004)

§ Norman Baker
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for what reasons the Environment Agency has not implemented a minimum standard for the amount of ozone-depleting substances recovered from each refrigerator. [154777]

§ Mr. Morley
Two of the principal aims of the Ozone Depleting Substance (ODS) Regulation (EC 2037/2000) are to prevent the release of existing ODS and ensure their recovery.
When setting performance standards the Environment Agency must have regard to the ODS Regulations and the criteria set out in Waste Management Paper No4 (WMP4). Licence conditions must be necessary, enforceable, unambiguous and comprehensive. The standard set by the Agency is based on the emission loss to the atmosphere from the process based on throughput, and the percentage loss through attachment to residual metal, plastic, foam and oil. The ODS Regulations do not require minimum 1767W recovery; only that releases are prevented and ODS recovered. The Environment Agency considers that the performance standards set meet these requirements.
Setting a minimum standard of ODS recovered would be problematic when assessed against the aforementioned criteria and the fact that fridges accepted at the facilities do not contain an average or an assumed amount of ODS, as carried out by certain other standards.

§ Norman Baker
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what percentage of chlorofluorocarbons is extracted from recovered refrigerators in(a) the United Kingdom and (b) other EU member states. [154778]

§ Mr. Morley
To calculate the percentage of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) from recovered refrigerators the average recovered CFCs per fridge for R11 and R12 needs to be used, which for 2003 in England and Wales are 186.13g and 50.5g respectively, and the average amount of CFCs contained in a refrigerator.
However, there is currently no agreed figure for an average amount of CFCs in a refrigerator across member states, primarily because of the variation in size and volume of units. Therefore it is not possible to assess and compare the percentage of CFCs with any confidence. It is for this reason that the performance standards set in the UK work on the basis of emissions lost in the process and those lost through attachment to residual metal, plastic, foam and oil.