Sustainability Unveiled: The Complex Process of Recycling Your Appliances

Unveiling the Environmental Impact & Recycling Journey of Household Appliances

Behind the scenes of our everyday appliances lies a tale of transformation—a journey from obsolete to reimagined. When it's time to bid farewell to your trusted fridge or washing machine, their journey doesn't culminate in a landfill. Instead, it embarks on a recycling odyssey, a meticulous process designed to salvage hazardous materials, reclaim valuable metals, and tackle the overlooked challenge of recycling plastics. Join us as we unravel the complexities of this often-overlooked yet critical realm, where innovation meets environmental stewardship.

An overview of the recycling process

When it comes to recycling appliances there are three major parts to it. All hazardous materials need to be recovered and recycled. These are materials that can be dangerous to you or to the environment.  Then the appliance is picked over for the various metals. And finally, the plastics that make up the appliance are recovered for future use.

Boring but important parts 

Before we dig into how recycling your appliances works, we need to look at why. In the first article, we mentioned how dangerous it is to leave appliances just rotting. What you might not know is that there is an initiative put together by the EPA within the United States to work on this, because of how dangerous this is. Called the Responsible Appliance Disposal partners, companies partner together with the EPA to accomplish a series of goals. They aim to protect the ozone layer, cut greenhouse gas emissions from the improper disposal of appliances, and work to benefit communities by keeping appliances out of landfills, parks, and waterways. 

Launched in October of 2006, RAD partners take the extra cost onto themselves to go above and beyond what federal law requires. Instead of just worrying about refrigerants like hydrofluorocarbon or the disposal of universal waste, instead, they look to recover insulation foam and to help remove older appliances from the secondhand market. 

Between 2007 and 2018, RAD partners have accomplished the following:

Diverted 1.06 billion pounds of ferrous metals and 88 million pounds of non-ferrous metals from landfills;

Recycled 196 million pounds of plastic; 

Recycled 30 million pounds of glass.

They’ve facilitated the proper handling of:

765,000 gallons of used oil; and

319,000 PCB and 196,000 mercury-containing components.

Hazardous Materials 

Depending on the age of your appliances, they can contain everything from mercury to used oil to polychlorinated biphenyls as well as ozone-depleting substances and hydrofluorocarbons. 

That's a lot of complex chemicals that all boil down to dangerous for you, the water system, and everything that we eat.  So, it makes sense that removing it is a top priority when it comes to recycling major appliances. These materials are recovered and recycled for future use either into new appliances or other everyday items. 

Not only do we benefit from being reused and kept out of our farms and foods, but by recycling these, we don't have to spend the fuel to dig up more or process the raw materials. 

One material that we didn't mention but is present in your refrigerators and freezers is insulation foam. The type used most often contains hydrofluorocarbons, and if left to break down or be degraded, would also be dangerous to the atmosphere. However, a new technology allows for that foam to be turned into pellets. These pellets can then be burned for fuel safely and used to fuel other parts of the recycling process.

Courtesy of The EPA

Metals 

Your appliances, large and small, contain a large variety of metals. Copper, aluminum, steel, all of these are recyclable. They can be reused either in making new appliances, other electronic circuits or any of a thousand other items that you come in contact with throughout the day. 

After, say, your refrigerator is broken down and stripped of all its hazardous materials, it gets shredded by large machines with many teeth. They rip all of the pieces down into pieces small enough to float on water. First, the danger confetti is gone over with a magnet. This pulls out the steel from the pile that can be set aside and use later. Unfortunately, we still have a large pile of mixed plastics and metals that do not respond to a magnet. So all of this gets dumped into water. The pieces are sorted using their density and ability to float to separate out the metals from the plastics. The plastic confetti gets sorted into the next step while the copper and aluminum stay here, along with any other metals, to be melted down and reused.

Plastics 

For a very long time, appliance recycling stopped at recovering the hazardous materials and the metals.  The plastics weren't seen as important. People didn't care that they were clogging up landfills and being utterly useless. Fortunately, others have stepped in and seen the necessity of change.

From the environmental aspect, you probably don't like eating plastic or the idea of your family eating plastic any more than the next person. And we highly doubt that you like the idea of your pets eating it either. Unfortunately, microplastics, or pieces of plastic that are less than 5 mm in size, have shown up everywhere. In waterways. In farms. In animals, land, sea, and air. On mountain tops, ages away from where they initially started. And most frighteningly in your blood. We don't say this to frighten anybody. This is, unfortunately a statement of fact. And leads us back to the reason why plastic recycling is necessary. 

Fortunately, the company Hitachi is leading the way. Not only are they working in Japan but also abroad, trying to find ways to recycle as much appliance plastic as possible. The use of plastics in home appliances is widespread and extensive. While it varies from appliance to appliance, at least 40% of most appliances is plastic. Plastics are made from crude oil and their market prices are affected by more than merely supply and demand. Politics, economics, and speculation all affect the price as well. With the rising demand for crude oil and the prices on a long-term upward trend, with every passing year, stable sources of plastic materials are becoming more difficult to obtain.  

Because of that, and additional issues within Japan specifically, Hitachi is looking at ways to increase the ability to recycle plastics. They do this by sorting through the various types of plastics within major appliances. Polypropylene, polystyrene, and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene makeup between 70 to 80% of the plastics used in home appliances. 

Polypropylene and general-purpose polystyrene are easy to identify. They're easy to find and easy to recycle. This makes them more valuable, so most shops will have dedicated crushers for these two plastic types. 

Remember the plastic confetti we mentioned earlier? This is where that comes back into play. Once the polypropylene and general-purpose polystyrene are pulled out you're left with a mixed bag of plastic confetti that still needs to be sorted. Previously this process would be done by hand if it was done at all. Hitachi is working on speeding up the process. They hope to install sorting equipment that can separate mixed plastics into individual types using water and electrostatic separation. 

Courtesy of Barphilosof

(Sidenote: If you're interested in the process of removing microplastics, that is a bit beyond the scope of our coverage on this site, but we do suggest some of the links we've left in the additional reading section. One from National Geographic explains the situation, and the other from Princeton discusses exciting research toward solving it.) 

Stepping back from the intricate process of appliance recycling, we're left with a profound realization of its undeniable significance. Recycling isn't just a mundane chore; it's a vital cog in the wheel of environmental preservation. Don't forget to revisit our previous article to deepen your understanding of the recycling journey. And keep an eye out for the forthcoming installments in this series, where we'll continue unraveling the compelling narrative of sustainable appliance management.

While recycling remains a pivotal solution, prevention is equally crucial. At Appliance Rescue Service, we're committed to prolonging the lifespan of your appliances, offering maintenance and repair services to keep them running efficiently. Whether it's a need for immediate repairs or a desire for a routine maintenance check, take the proactive step towards sustainable appliance care. Contact us today to schedule an appointment or visit our website for more information on how we can assist in maintaining your appliances for a greener, more efficient household.

Call us at: (214) 599-0055

Additional Reading

Explaining The Basics Of Appliance Recycling

RAD Partners

New Research On Removing Microplastics

The Plastic Crisis Explained

Explaining the Basics of Appliance Recycling

Why It Matters To You And The Planet

Imagine a world where every home, every neighborhood, and every city makes a conscious choice towards a greener, more sustainable future. A world where your old appliances, once destined for the scrapyard, find new life and purpose, reducing your energy bills, lessening the load on our aging power grids, and shielding our fragile environment from harm. This world isn't a distant dream; it's within reach, and the key to unlocking this greener reality lies in something you might have never considered - appliance recycling. In the pages ahead, we'll unravel the complexities of this vital practice and show you how, by recycling your appliances, you can become an eco-warrior, an economic champion, and a guardian of the planet. Welcome to the beginning of a journey towards a brighter, more sustainable tomorrow.

Unveiling Appliance Recycling: A Green Solution

Courtesy of Vlada Karpovich

Let's start by clarifying something: recycling, surprisingly, can mean a couple of different things when it comes to appliances. It might mean the resale or reusing of a unit, or it might mean the breaking down of the unit as far as possible and reselling the valuable scraps while everything else is sent on to a landfill. This second option is especially problematic, as it does not contain or safely dispose of the hazardous chemicals contained within the refrigerator. Our point here is that "recycling" can be a vague term that does not always line up with best environmental practices.

It is important to figure out how to recycle your appliances and how to do it safely, as the outcome is directly tied to your future health and that of everyone else. We all know that at this point.

The concept of reduce, reuse and recycle has probably been drilled into our collective consciousness for 30 plus years at this point - at least in the United States.

What most people don't know, though, is that recycling doesn't have to just be paying somebody else to take the appliance off your hands. In fact, there are several ways that recycling appliances can actually benefit you. By working with us through this four post series, we'll show you how you can benefit from recycling appliances, how the environment benefits, your partners you can look to in the process, and how to go about it.

Eco-Warriors Wanted: The Environmental Impact of Appliance Recycling

Now that we've told you why you want to be involved with recycling, let's take a look at the environmental impact of it.

The most obvious benefit of recycling household appliances is personal energy savings. The lower bill is nice, but especially nice is the knowledge that you're helping reduce overall usage in your area. 

Think of how often during the summer Texas has rolling brownouts because of the age of our electric grid. How often do you have to prioritize utilizing your washer versus running your air conditioner? Now think about if every household was able to switch over to modern, efficient, energy-saving appliances. Given that household appliances are among the biggest draws on the electric grid, you can see how beneficial this could be to Texas as a whole.

Now we won't say that industry, agriculture, entertainment venues or schools don't have their own impact on the grid. However, those things are much larger than our purview here at Appliance Rescue.

Recycling your major appliances allows for the recovery and reuse of materials. For every appliance that gets recycled and broken down, that's one less that has to be created from scratch. The energy isn't put into mining new materials from the Earth; the fuel isn't used for processing those materials. Instead, what has already been used can be reused, and the hard workers in our factories and appliance sections are still able to be paid.

Another benefit is that the recycling of these parts reduces the emission of harmful substances that negatively impact our ozone layer. 

In Texas, we are acutely aware of the heat every summer. You have days at a time where you're told "don't go outside if you can avoid it," because it is just that hot. We are more acutely aware of this than people in some of the farther north areas of the country. Part of the reason for the growing heat year-over-year is the impact we've already made on our ozone layer.

While we cannot go in-depth into all of the myriad things (both caused by humans and caused naturally by cycles within the Earth) that are affecting the ozone layer, we can say that the materials used within major appliances do affect it if allowed to just release into a landfill. If we could stop adding to that, we won't say that it's a miraculous cure for the heat - but it is one less step toward making it any hotter.

Another topic to consider is E-Waste. For the last decade or two, the concept of e-waste has started to filter into our understanding of recycling and issues with the environment.

Courtesy of Pixabay

Many of us wouldn't look at our appliances and think that they would be contributing to this problem. After all, e-waste is from things like cell phones, computers, tablets and gaming consoles - not your refrigerator or your oven, right?

Nope! As we shift towards smarter appliances, this means that your e-waste also includes your appliances. There are circuit boards within your stove. There are tablets built into your refrigerator. If you've got Wi-Fi connectivity, that requires its own set of bits and bobs built in, which means another layer to be conscious of when disposing of your appliances.

However, all of this e-waste contains valuable resources that can be reprocessed and reused. Metals, glass, plastics: all of these can be returned to a purified state and reused for making other materials, either for new appliances or for something else entirely.

Think back to science class as a kid. One day, if you were lucky, your teacher pulled out this beautiful silvery liquid to show the way that it could collect on surfaces, be manipulated, and then group back together easily at room temperature. And then, at the end of the display, you were told that although it looked like fun, it wasn't. It was definitely not something you could play with bare-handed because it would get into your skin, then into your bloodstream and from there into your brain.

Or maybe you remember learning about the story of Alice in Wonderland and the dark reasons why the Mad Hatter is mad in the first place.

Yes, we're talking about mercury. Mercury is in many older models of refrigerators; more of them than you might think. Unfortunately, when old refrigerators aren't recycled properly, that mercury does leech out of them and into the ground below. Then it works its way into the water, which then goes into the plants, on into animals... And while it does take time, just like microplastics, it eventually ends up in what you're eating. Even for all of our best attempts at eating organic, or fair trade, or vegan - without taking care of where materials are disposed of, it still circles back around. Everyone - elders from even the most isolated tribes all the way to scientists studying in their labs - will tell you on every level, everything is connected. Unfortunately, that means that if you feed the water table mercury, you will eventually be feeding it to yourself.

A final point to consider is that recycling major appliances or even minor ones as we'll cover in a later post, does not simply benefit you. It doesn't just benefit the planet. It also greatly impacts our economy in a positive way.

With the amount of trash that gets collected just in a single year, there is an amazing amount of job security. You need people to sort everything. You need people to handle the processing. You need people to handle extraction. All of these (and so many more) are necessary jobs that would not exist if not for recycling. More importantly, the industry can stand to grow further, given how little is actually being recycled as of right now.

By recycling your major appliances as a consumer, you are telling the industry as a whole that this is something that matters. You are saying that you want to ensure it continues, and that it is worth their time and resources to see it done more often or more thoroughly.

Not only do you support jobs when you recycle, you also support the creation of a circular economy. When things are broken, they have multiple options. Right now, you might look at it and see there are only two choices: take it to a landfill (and probably pay a fee), or call somebody like us and have it repaired.

But what about when it gets to the point that even our best technicians can't keep your appliances running any longer? It might not be that we don't know how to fix something, but instead that we don't have the materials or tools, or that the parts simply are not being made for this model any longer. At that point, a circular economy says, instead of sending this off to a landfill to become just another piece of garbage (taking up space and not having any use), the next step is to break it down. Take every single piece and material that we can out of this. Instead of having to purchase new, raw materials from a company that's going to rip them out of the Earth, we can reuse what we've already harvested. The circular economy is good for you the consumer, it's good for the economy of the United States, and it's good for the planet! Three wins in one.

Leading the Way: The Responsible Appliance Disposal (RAD) Program

If you've been paying attention, you might have noticed that at several points we touched on how few people or industries or companies recycle right now. We've also mentioned that recycling does not always mean the best environmental practices.That is where the Responsible Appliance Disposal, or RAD, program comes in.

They are a leader in responsible recycling practices. The RAD program was developed by the US environmental protection agencies partnership, launched in 2006 to protect our ozone, cut greenhouse gases and benefit communities like ours.

The RAD program recognizes partners all over the country who are committed to collecting and disposing of old appliances using the best practices. These partners are going well beyond what is currently required by federal law.

 They take on the responsibility to recover things like insolation foam out of  end-of-life appliances. They also collect the less efficient models of appliances from the secondary market. From here they work with recyclers to ensure that the materials are handled properly and broken down safely to comply with federal law. 

Together, we've uncovered the immense potential of appliance recycling and its profound impact on our world. As you embark on your journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle, remember that Appliance Rescue is here to support you every step of the way. When your faithful appliances are in need of care, trust our expert technicians to breathe new life into them, ensuring they serve you for years to come. Let's make recycling a part of our daily lives and embrace a future where both our planet and your appliances thrive. Join us in this eco-conscious mission, one repair at a time. 

You can reach out to us via our contact page or by giving us a call ((214) 599-0055). You can also connect with us on Facebook. 

Additional Resources For Things We’ve Mentioned Throughout :

Waste | Take Care of Texas

https://www.epa.gov/rad/responsible-appliance-disposal-rad-partners-affiliates-recyclers

Additional Reading: 

https://appliance-rescue-service.com/blog/appliance-disposal2023