The Coolest Recycling Drive

Sustainable Warwick’s Second Coolest Recycling Drive in Warwick is Now Complete!

After collecting 130 refrigerant-containing appliances in 2023, this year’s effort collected 149 appliances, including 78 air conditioners, 21 refrigerators and 37 dehumidifiers. 

Throughout the year appliance owners can take old appliances to any of the Orange County Transfer Stations to have them properly recycled, but the cost is $15. One reason we think this project is cool is because no fees are charged, which means we helped residents save more than $2,000. Also, our local drop-off events are more convenient than schlepping appliances to the Orange County Transfer Station.

But the main reason it is so cool is because the refrigerants that are recovered are thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. We conservatively estimate the refrigerants recovered are the equivalent of 400,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, or roughly similar to the emissions of burning 20,400 gallons of gasoline, enough to drive the average car some 460,000 miles or to fuel 43 average cars for a full year. If the appliances we collected had been taken apart for scrap metal or dumped in a landfill before the refrigerants were removed, they would have resulted in a shockingly large environmental effect on everyone.

Susannah Devine, of the Chester Conservation Advisory Council, shared this observation after the drop-off event in Chester collected 54 appliances:  "Our neighbors were so thankful/grateful/happy to do the right thing. Many donors today have kept these ACs or dehumidifiers for years because they could not get rid of them properly. They were so pleased to have the opportunity to do the right thing. Sure, some just wanted these things out of their homes, but most understood and really appreciated why this type of collection matters. It was quite inspiring and touching."

Stories

At the Chester drop-off event we received a single can of R12 refrigerant, which they stopped making in the 1990s because it’s so bad for the ozone. The owner said last year he had taken a box of 12 cans to a hazard materials event, but noticed one of the cans was missing. If the contents of that 14 ounce can was released to the atmosphere, it would have the same greenhouse gas effect of burning 567 gallons of gasoline. We’re grateful this can was brought in so its contents can be safely recovered.

A couple showed up at the Greenwood Lake drop-off event pushing an old air conditioner that was strapped into a wheel chair with bungee cords. They did not feel confident about lifting it into a car, so they took advantage of the beautiful weather to get in a walk (and their home was just a few blocks away). 

A gentleman brought an air conditioner to our Florida drop-off event and explained they had only used the air conditioner a few hours each of the last couple years, then they got new central air conditioning so they no longer wanted it. After we checked in with Town of Warwick Recreation Director Sam Walter, a couple volunteers delivered the air conditioner to its new home at Mountain Lake Park.

Thanks

We are particularly grateful to Hudson Technologies for sponsoring the team of refrigerant recovery experts who captured the refrigerants from the appliances. They normally work on jobs that entail much larger volumes of refrigerants, and we appreciate their generous support of our volunteer work. 

Many thanks also go to the Town of Warwick, particularly Supervisor Jesse Dwyer and DPW Director Ben Astorino, who have been very accommodating with providing space and support for the Coolest Recycling Drive. Further thanks go to the Town of Chester and Supervisor Brandon Holdridge and to the Villages of Florida and Greenwood Lake for supporting drop-off events in their jurisdictions. We also thank the many organizations and individuals who helped us publicize the Coolest Recycling Drive, including the Warwick Valley Chamber of Commerce, Assembly Member Karl Brabenec, the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Greenwood Lake Lions Club.

The Coolest Recycling Drive would not have been possible without the volunteers who pitched in at the drop-off events, including: Bill Greene (who showed up with his horse trailer throughout the drive), Bob Scott, Susannah Devine, Elizabeth Barrett-Zahn, Jeff Zahn, Grayson Eli Sussman Squires, Tracy Schuh, Justin George, Christy Erfer, Alana Heller, Chrisso Babcock, Kevin Ryan, Jenna Price, Conner Price, and Kate Debold. 

In the 2024 Coolest Recycling Drive, we collected:

• 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)

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 did 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.

Here are the results from 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