Page 24 from: March 2014

24 March 2014

Making
a world of
difference

It may seem like Mission Impossible: to proc-ess 1 million discarded fridges without a seri-
ous collection infrastructure. But Dr Philipp

Bohr, managing director of Brazilian recycling

company Indústria Fox, is well on the way to

proving that the impossible is truly possible.

Having come on stream in the second half of

2011, the company’s facility has processed

230 000 fridges thus far, Bohr confirmed to

delegates at the late-January International Elec-

tronics Recycling Congress (IERC) held in the

Austrian city of Salzburg.

Chosen as a pioneer project operator under the

Swiss Climate Protection Initiative, Indústria Fox

was founded five years ago in order to operate

South America’s first ‘state-of-the-art’ recycling

facility for refrigerators and freezers. The com-

pany’s commercial focus is climate protection

through reduction of the greenhouse gas emis-

sions associated with irresponsible end-of-life

management of cooling

and freezing appliances.

The Indústria Fox ini-

tiative, which has

entailed a US$ 600 000

investment in educa-

tion, training and social

programmes, is an

exciting and, above all,

challenging project

given the added dimen-

sion of recycling in a

country as immense as Brazil. ‘One of the main

problems is the highly-dispersed network of

small, informal collectors,’ Bohr noted. ‘Also, we

don’t have an institutional environment for take-

back systems; there is no government finance or

execution of extended producer responsibility

and, perhaps more important, there is a lack of

necessity and desire for high-quality recycling.’

Serving the favelas
This means fridge recycling in Brazil would

have to work on an economic basis but this is

‘completely unviable because of CFC capture

and destruction costs’, Bohr stressed. Current-

ly, Indústria Fox is subsidising its recycling

efforts with logistics activities. The company is

participating in a major project launched by

the Brazilian government to provide new fridg-

es across the country to thousands of poor

households in the favelas, Brazil’s shanty towns.

According to Bohr, the good thing is that ‘wher-

ever we deliver new fridges, we take back the old

I E R C R E V I E W By Martijn Reintjes

The challenge of e-scrap:

It’s one of the hottest topics in global recycling: how properly to

handle the rapidly-growing volumes of used electrical and electronic

products arising in the emerging economies of South America and

Africa. On a positive note, some of the initiatives launched both by

big consumer brands and innovative recyclers have slowly but surely

begun to bear fruit, as highlighted at the latest International

Electronics Recycling Congress. However, the event also emphasised

that major hurdles remain to be overcome.

Dr Philipp Bohr: Brazil does not
have an institutional environ-
ment for refrigerator take-back
systems.

Cintia Gates: ‘Large-scale
bureaucracy’ is frustrating elec-
tronics recycling initiatives in
Latin America.

Hervé Guilcher: The E-Waste
Solutions Alliance for Africa will
target Tanzania and Ethiopia
next.

RI-2-2014-IERC.indd 24 05-03-14 15:11