Fridge mountains: a thaw point
MOVES are being made to tackle the chilling mountain of fridges piled on a waste site in Suffolk. At the last count 25,000 unwanted domestic appliances were being stored in the specially prepared site in Great Blakenham - at a cost to the council tax payer of £800,000.
MOVES are being made to tackle the chilling mountain of fridges piled on a waste site in Suffolk.
At the last count 25,000 unwanted domestic appliances were being stored in the specially prepared site in Great Blakenham - at a cost to the council tax payer of £800,000.
But over the next fortnight ten lorry-loads of fridges - amounting to 5,000 appliances - will be shipped off to Germany for reprocessing.
Howard Mottram, assistant waste services manager for Suffolk County Council, said: "The first load will go next week.
"The amount on the lorry depends on the size but there will be about 500 fridges on each articulated lorry.
"They will be exported to Germany because there are more reprocessing plants than in Britain."
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The white mountain of fridges has been pilling up at the site since Christmas last year because of a new directive from Europe.
New European Union requirements rule that every old fridge or freezer should be disposed of in special crushers to stop dangerous chlorofluocarbons (CFCs) leaking into the atmosphere.
The result was a nationwide problem because Britain – which now has four static reprocessing plants and three mobile ones – did not have the infrastructure to cope.
Residents in Suffolk, and particularly the Great Blakenham area, however, will no longer be left out of the cold.
From January next year mobile reprocessing plants will regularly call at the Great Blakenham site.
