The Luxembourg-based RAL Quality Assurance Association for the Demanufacture of Refrigeration Equipment Containing CFCs has demanded a serious debate on minimum acceptable quality requirements for the recycling of obsolete refrigeration equipment. At the same time, it suggests that a European fridge recycling standard could be established without difficulty in the near future.
It contends that, unlike with other types of waste electrical equipment, a uniform standard is largely in place within the fridge recycling sector. ‘The RAL standard has established itself throughout Europe as a means of ensuring the environmentally sound treatment of waste refrigeration equipment,’ it states. ‘The key parameters in the RAL quality assurance and test specifications have been taken as the basis for the national legislation in a number of European countries such as Austria, Denmark and Germany. In other countries, public invitations to tender for fridge recycling services have been compiled on the basis of the RAL quality standard.’
However, stakeholders within the EU Commission, member state governments and the manufacturing and recycling communities ‘must find a means of consolidating existing knowledge on minimum quality requirements in a binding document that is applicable to all European recyclers’, it says. RAL also calls for the creation of an institution to perform regular independent checks to ensure recyclers are actually complying with the specified quality requirements.
Acknowledgement
For more information: www.ral-online.org
