Why You Should Recycle Your Unwanted Air Conditioner
by Jessica Scott
Time to get rid of your old or broken residential air conditioner? While the rules and guidelines for disposing of air conditioners will depend on your municipality, one thing is for sure — you can't throw away an inoperable AC unit with your regular household rubbish. That's illegal, and it can attract a hefty fine.
Why are the rules different when it comes to discarding air conditioning units?
The refrigerant in AC units is manufactured using chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which cause ozone depletion when released into the atmosphere. Recycling is one of the most popular options for disposing of unwanted AC units because it involves removing the hazardous materials in an environmentally safe manner. This delivers benefits beyond protecting the atmosphere's ozone layer.
Check out some of the important advantages associated with air conditioner recycling below.
Allows recovery of valuable materials.
Your air conditioner is made of various materials such as metal and plastic that have reuse value. When you take your appliance to a designated HVAC recycling center, all of its recyclable parts will be removed and recycled to be used for the manufacture of new products.
The use of recycled materials in manufacturing applications helps reduce the total cost of production. The cost savings that manufacturers realize can then be passed on to end users in terms of lower prices.
The availability of recycled materials also helps to minimize the demand for virgin materials, which require much more energy to create compared to recycled materials.
Saves space on active landfill sites.
With the average American producing three times more solid waste than the global average, it's becoming increasingly important to find more sustainable methods of disposing of waste. Since land is a natural resource whose supply is fixed, any strategy that helps divert garbage from existing landfill sites provides welcome relief for municipalities.
Air conditioner recycling helps to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills, thus preserving the limited space available for waste disposal. It also helps to minimize pollution at landfills because hazardous materials that could have been dumped at the sites are removed as part of the recycling process.
Recycling is one of the best ways to dispose of inoperable air conditioners. However, it is a job that requires expertise and experience to do safely and correctly. Get in touch with the experts at an AC recycling center near you to plan your job and get your quote.
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About Me
We only have one earth to leave for our grandchildren, so we need to do everything in our power to ensure that it is a healthy environment for them to raise their children in. Do you recycle? If so, do you recycle everything that you could be recycling? Many Americans think that they are doing everything that they can to keep trash out of landfills, but many of them are missing several materials that could be eliminated from the landfill. Visit my site to learn more about those missed or forgotten materials so that you can improve the recycling efforts in your home.