Small recycling centres packed with worn-out household appliances - anything from broken phones to motorcycles - dot towns and villages across Mexico. It is in these mostly one-person workshops that the recycling and destruction of tons of electric appliances are handled. In most of these centres, the process is quite rudimentary: the appliances are disassembled and the parts that can be reused are recycled; then the parts that have no value are dumped in landfills where the waste can cause serious environmental problems.

Among the discarded articles, two types of appliance are particularly detrimental to the environment; namely, refrigerators and air conditioners, both of which usually contain chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) - the two main sources of the halogen atoms that deplete our planet’s ozone layer.

Ozone depleting substances (ODS) damage the Earth’s fragile ozone layer, which serves as a sunscreen, protecting humans and animals from the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation. The thinning of the ozone layer is believed to have a variety of biological consequences such as increases in sunburn, skin cancer, cataracts, damage to plants, and a reduction of plankton populations in the ocean's photic zone. Many ODS gases are, at the same time, greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

To mitigate the hazardous influence of ODS, in 1989, a universal agreement, known as the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, entered into force. The Protocol was designed to reduce the production and consumption of ODS, and under it each country has the obligation to phase out appliances that release the ODS pollutants.

Mexico has been one of the largest ODS emitters in the world. The Government closed down all CFC-production facilities in 2005, but, in many cases, CFC-use has been superseded by HCFC, a gas which has smaller depleting effect but is still subject to a phase-out schedule under the Protocol and which contributes to global warming. In 2010 alone, the country’s HCFC consumption reached around 1,150 tons.

The issue at stake is how to capture the ODS gases and dispose of them in an environmentally-friendly manner. Committed to fulfilling its obligation under the Protocol, the Government of Mexico put forward an incentive scheme to encourage households and companies to replace electric appliances that contain high volumes of ODS, and provided recycling centres with support with the destruction of these harmful gases.

However, largely lacking the technical capacity to extract ODS from the obsolete appliances, let alone to dispose of the gases, many small recycling centres continued to dump the non-reusable parts. The absence of a system to regulate the small recycling centres made it difficult for the government to monitor or control their practices, making it difficult to enforce the implementation of the Protocol. For bigger companies, exporting the waste to countries such as the USA was the common solution, which resulted in high management and transportation costs.

Therefore, it was vital to create regulations and mechanisms across the country in order to control and dispose of ODS in a systematic, cost-effective and sustainable way. To this end, since 2011 the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resource of Mexico have been implementing a project funded by the Government of France and the Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol.

As a first step, UNIDO and its counterparts identified a Mexican company, Ecofrigo S.A. de C.V., as the aggregation centre to collect all the waste from small recycling centres. Located on the outskirts of Mexico City, Ecofrigo is one of Mexico’s leading companies that recycles and destroys unwanted refrigerators and air conditioners, but, lacking modern equipment, its established practice was to export most of its recycled materials to the USA.  

UNIDO helped the company purchase new equipment and tools to enable it to store all the waste materials collected, as well as to extract ODS gases from the appliances. Meanwhile, UNIDO organized several workshops to train technicians on extracting gases and capturing them in special containers. Since the implementation of the project, Ecofrigo has aggregated around 1.7 million refrigerators and air conditioners, from which it has, according to Antony Lozano, Director General of Ecofrigo, extracted more than 150 tons of ODS gas.

The extracted ODS gas should be disposed of in facilities using the technologies indicated in the Montreal Protocol, meaning that these facilities must meet or exceed the Montreal Protocol’s Technology and Economic Assessment Panel guidelines. After a thorough technical evaluation by UNIDO, a Mexican company in the northern city of Monterrey, Quimobasicos, was chosen. Quimobasicos possesses the only facility in the whole of Latin America that uses the cutting-edge Plasma Arc technology to dispose of ODS.

The task of transporting the ODS gas is not an easy one. To facilitate the successful transfer of ODS gas from Ecofrigo to Quimobasicos, UNIDO identified a list of requirements for transportation that are in compliance with national and international standards. It also trained technicians involved in the transportation process. 

Once the ODS gas is transported to the Quimobasicos plant, the destruction process begins. Upon receiving and verifying the documentation of the materials, technicians in Quimobasicos weigh and analyze the content, and establish the parameters under which the destruction will be held.

The ODS gas then is injected into the Argon Plasma Arc facility, in which the gas is processed at a temperature of 10,000 degrees in 23 milliseconds and is suddenly cooled to 50 degrees. This process decomposes 99.995% of the ODS molecules, resulting a near zero emissions of harmful gas to the atmosphere. 

So far, Quimobasicos has made a significant impact. Within the past four years, the plant has destroyed around 74 tons of ODS gas transferred from Ecofrigo alone, an amount equivalent to the direct emissions from 141 million internal combustion vehicles.   

In total, UNIDO has trained around 8,000 technicians involved in the process of collection, aggregation, destruction and transport of ODS waste, helping create a skilled workforce for Mexico.

There are very few companies in Mexico that have the capacity to dispose of ODS gas in compliance with national and international standards, giving Quimobasicos almost a total monopoly. To broaden the technical choices and strengthen the nation’s capacity in this regard, UNIDO worked with another company equipped with a cement kiln, which can be used in another ODS-destruction process approved under the Montreal Protocol.   

UNIDO helped the company obtain the necessary permission to dispose the ODS in its facility using incineration technologies, and advised technicians on how to carry out trials on the equipment, set up the right parameters and present results to the competitive authorities. With UNIDO’s technical assistance, the company now has the capacity to perform the disposal of ODS gas conforming to regulations.  

“UNIDO’s technical intervention and the cooperation with the Government rendered Mexico the first country in the Latin America and the Caribbean region to implement a national plan of collecting, transporting and destroying ODS pollutants in a systematic manner. Mexico’s successful practice serves as a model for other countries in the region,” said Manuel Caballero Alarcon, the UNIDO project manager.
 

By ZHONG Xingfei

Watch the project video