Narrator: Refrigerators are one of the hardest items
to recycle. And they're filled with polluting gases
that can leak out in the process.
These can warm the Earth
thousands of times more than carbon dioxide.
But Ángel Toledo is fighting to keep that from happening.
Scientists say controlling fridge gases
is one of the best ways to fight the climate crisis.
So why aren't more people doing it?
We visited Ángel's business in Guatemala to find out.
Narrator: It took Ángel about a year
after founding his recycling company
to figure out what to do with refrigerator gas.
Narrator: During that time, over 4,000 fridges piled up
at Ecología Total.
Now, Ángel his team handle about 400
industrial refrigerators a month.
Many of them come from a partnership with Pepsi.
First, they check whether a fridge still contains gases.
Narrator: The gas leaked out of about a third
of these fridges during use.
If there is gas, they attach tubes and collect it.
Narrator: Each fridge contains about a half a pound of gas.
It may not sound like a lot, but ...
Narrator: Ángel makes no money from collecting the gases.
That's where recycling the other parts comes into play.
Narrator: Then they fold up the metal sheets,
and a machine crushes them into blocks.
These recovered metals help pay the bills.
Narrator: This rigid foam is particularly hard to recycle
because it can't be melted and reshaped
like other types of plastic.
Narrator: Ángel is still trying to figure out how to reuse it.
Narrator: Grinding up this type of foam can also release gases,
but they could leak anyway if the foam sat in a landfill.
Ángel says the crumbled foam could be used
to insulate roofs or made into coolers.
But right now,
the company doesn't make money off of it either.
Narrator: Workers also strip wires to sell the metals inside.
Only about 5% of the fridges recycled here
contain first-generation gases,
the oldest and most harmful ones.
These are known as chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs,
the same kind of stuff you used to find in hairspray.
They're terrible for the ozone layer
in the upper atmosphere.
Announcer: Ozone is important
because it shields the surface of the Earth
from the sun's ultraviolet rays.
Narrator: If it disappeared,
life on Earth wouldn't last long.
In 1985, scientists
discovered a giant hole
in the ozone over Antarctica
caused by CFCs from fridges and other products.
Two years later, the UN introduced an agreement
to phase out the ozone-depleting gases.
It became the only UN treaty ratified by every country.
Manufacturers eventually settled on using HFCs,
or hydrofluorocarbons.
And the switch actually worked.
In 2016, scientists found
that the hole had shrunk
by an area twice the size
of Mexico in 15 years.
Ángel uses this machine to figure out
whether each refrigerator's gas affects the ozone.
He got the device from an American company
called Tradewater,
which finds and destroys fridge gases around the world.
After analysis, ozone-thinning gases
go into 4,000-pound storage tanks.
Tradewater also helps Ángel figure out
where to send these gases for destruction.
We formed this collaboration
where we look for refrigerant together.
And then when we reach a critical mass in the country,
we export those to get destroyed
at a proper destruction facility.
Narrator: Right now, Ecología Total is building up
enough gases to make shipping them out for destruction
economically feasible.
To destroy the gases,
a special type of waste facility
heats them until the molecules come apart.
The machine cools back down,
and eventually more than 99%
of the gas becomes water or steam.
If the fridge has a gas that doesn't affect the ozone,
Ángel might reuse it in another refrigerator.
Narrator: But even though these are easier on the ozone layer,
they still contribute to climate change,
and some nations started phasing them out in 2016.
One common HFC has more than 1,000 times
the warming power of carbon dioxide,
so recycling these gases into new refrigerators
is controversial among experts.
We know that the odds of it being properly recovered again
at the end of that second life,
let's say that you're giving it, are relatively low,
so we'd rather get that destroyed than get it recycled.
Narrator: But everyone agrees
that the ozone-thinning gases should be destroyed.
Even though most manufacturers stopped using CFCs by 2009,
they're still leaking out of old equipment around the world.
If no one stops those leaks,
they'll add the equivalent of 10 billion metric tons
of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
That's almost twice what the whole US emitted in 2018.
Getting the gases to these destruction facilities
is a challenge, too.
These materials are considered hazardous waste
by most countries around the world.
Narrator: So moving them across borders
means navigating a web of legal restrictions.
Tradewater helps Ángel do that
by selling something called a carbon offset credit.
Anyone who wants to lower their carbon footprint
can buy a credit from Tradewater,
and the money will help the company fight greenhouse gases.
And that's how we are able to cover the costs
of the whole operation and recover that investment.
Narrator: Ángel's business also gets a cut of this money.
María José: So it's this positive cycle of the more we find,
the more we can finance to go and find and collect
and avoid some more greenhouse gases.
Narrator: A company might find it cheaper or easier
to buy an offset from Tradewater
than to reduce its own emissions.
When companies advertise net-zero emissions,
that often means they bought enough offset credits
to compensate for their own emissions.
But even this system is controversial,
because it can allow companies
to claim a smaller carbon footprint
while carrying on business as usual.
You should always avoid and reduce emissions first.
It's always better to not spill the milk on the table
than to try to clean it up afterwards.
Narrator: And it's common for companies
to overestimate the environmental benefits of the credits.
It's a bit of a Wild West
when it comes to the voluntary carbon market.
We've seen that the vast majority of projects
fail to meet our basic sustainability requirements
related to climate integrity, biodiversity protection,
and social impacts.
Narrator: Ultimately, carbon offsets are useful
if they pay for projects that wouldn't happen otherwise.
And María José says Tradewater follows strict protocols
to make sure its offsets really work.
María José: It involves a lot of little details
to make sure we're doing things right.
Calibration of scales, traceability of the refrigerant,
making sure we fulfill
the technical environmental assessment panel requirements
from the Montreal Protocol.
Narrator: Ángel says these requirements
might be one reason so few companies
are working to safely dispose of fridge gases.
And knowing his work helps the environment keeps him going.