The Coolest Recycling Drive

After a successful 2023, we’re expanding and improving for the Coolest Recycling Drive 2024. Besides holding drop-off events in Warwick, there will also be one in Chester and others in Ulster County.

Our aim is to collect appliances with refrigerants so they can be properly recycled with no cost to participants. Because the refrigerants are extremely intense greenhouse gases, we believe recycling these appliances is the most important thing most of us will ever recycle. (That’s why this recycling drive is extremely cool!) Our Warwick drive will be held the week of Operation Clean Sweep and will include drop-off events at the following times and locations:

Monday April 22, 3-7 PM, @ Warwick DPW - 63 Public Works Rd, Warwick*

Thursday, April 25, 4-6:30 PM @ Florida Village Barn - Maple Ave, Florida

Saturday, April 27, 9AM to Noon (Operation Clean Sweep hours) @ Warwick DPW - 63 Public Works Rd, Warwick*

Saturday, April 27, 1-4 PM @ Greenwood Lake Village DPW - 70 Elm St, Greenwood Lake

* Last year we collected appliances in the parking lot of Town Hall, but this year we will be stationed down by the Warwick Transit Building.

In the 2024 Coolest Recycling Drive, we will collect:

• Refrigerators and freezers (only at the Warwick DPW drop-off locations)

• Window air conditioners

• Dehumidifiers

• Mini Refrigerators

• Water coolers

• Refrigerant tanks and canisters (if they have valuable unmixed refrigerants we will help you get payment for them)

We’ll also have a pickup truck brigade ready to go to homes of people who do not have a good way to schlep their appliances to a drop-off site. To sign up for a pickup, fill in this request form.

Usually residents of Warwick have to take their appliance to a county transfer station and pay a $15 recycling fee. According to Project Drawdown, refrigerants are a huge contributor to climate change, and capturing refrigerants from end-of-life appliances is part of the solution to preventing emissions of refrigerants. Unfortunately, it seems less than 10% of all appliances are properly recycled, so please alert friends and neighbors to this opportunity to have their appliances properly disposed of, at no charge.

How will we recycle the appliances?

After all the appliances are gathered, an EPA-certified technician from Hudson Technologies will use a refrigerant pump to transfer the refrigerants from the appliances to special recovery tanks. They will then take the recovery tanks to their EPA-certified reclamation facilities, where they will clean the refrigerant and restore it to a reusable standard.

As far as the remains of the appliances after the refrigerants have been removed, they’ll be sent for scrap metal recycling as light iron.

This year we are accepting full-size refrigerators in the Coolest Recycling Drive, but only at the events by Warwick DPW (63 Public Works Road). O&R used to pay a rebate for full-size refrigerators, but this is no longer the case. Before bringing a refrigerator to the Coolest Recycling Drive, please remove any plastic drawers or other non-metal items that are not connected.

Questions? Email CleanEnergy@sustainablewarwick.org

We have concluded the Coolest Recycling Drive of 2023!

Sustainable Warwick is pleased to announce the Coolest Recycling Drive of 2023 to collect appliances with refrigerants was very successful. Because last year all of Orange County recycled about 1,000 of these appliances, we could estimate that 80 of those came from Warwick (which comprises about 8% of OC’s population). But the Coolest Recycling Drive of 2023 took in 130 appliances, a huge increase.

More importantly, based on data from the company that recovered the refrigerants, the Coolest Recycling Drive captured greenhouse gases equivalent to nearly half a million pounds of CO2 on a 20-year basis. According to the EPA’s greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator, that is similar to the emissions of 50 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year.

Moreover, after the appliances had the refrigerants removed, they amounted to 7,080 pounds of “light iron” that was sold to Sims Metal, which will separate the metals from the other materials for recycling. The payment to Sustainable Warwick for the dumpster full of drained appliances covered about 25% of the refrigerant recovery costs, and donations from participants covered a similar amount.

What makes this really cool, is that the total cost to Sustainable Warwick will work out to under $1,000. Because the refrigerants are such insanely intense greenhouse gases, properly recovering them quickly adds up to preventing tons and tons of emissions.

Sustainable Warwick’s Climate and Energy Committee particularly thanks the hard-working volunteers at the drop-off events and dumpster packing: Bill Greene, Arnold Vila, Mike Fields, Dave Erfer, Bill Makofske, Mary Makofske, Kate Debold, Katy Glover, Bob Scott, Kevin Ryan, Alex Gong and Michael Helme, as well as the outstanding public relations work of Christy Erfer.

We are also grateful to: Supervisor Michael Sweeton, Town of Warwick; the Warwick DPW and its Commissioner, Benjamin Astorino; Mayor Dan Harter and Village of Florida Trustees; and the Greenwood Lake Public Library’s Director Jill Cronin and Librarian Mary Sheeran. Further thanks go to the Warwick Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Operation Clean Sweep team, including Karen Wintrow, Stephanie Keegan, Girl Scout Ambassador Elizabeth Verboys and Girl Scout Cadet Libby Schlichting. These groups and individuals all helped make our drop-off events possible.

We also thank Jamie Bogert of Alpine Air, Guy Bogart of Warwick Sanitation, Pat MacMillan of Community2gether, and New Yorkers for Cool Refrigerant Management for providing logistical, technical and administrative advice and support.

The final word of thanks goes to community members who contributed their appliances to the recycling drive and especially those who generously contributed monetary donations.

We learned many lessons from organizing this project and look forward to a bigger and better Coolest Recycling Drive of 2024!

Your donations help defray the costs of promoting the Coolest Recycling Drive. Thank you!

For more information: CleanEnergy@sustainablewarwick.org