Synthetic refrigerants (sometimes known as F-gases) are vital to our safety and wellbeing. They flow through our daily lives, from maternity ward to mortuary. And they’re invisible, odourless and generally harmless to people.

Household heat-pumps to IT server-rooms. Kitchen fridges to supermarket food chillers - and the farms that fill them with delicious but perishable foods. The family car on your drive to industrial truck fleets. Even in hospital equipment like MRIs and manufacturing processes for plastics, medications and vaccines. Circulating the system to create cold temperatures.

Some occur in nature; others are synthetically manufactured. Natural refrigerants are more flammable while synthetic refrigerants are more stable, so there are pros and cons to both. However, unlike our more natural refrigerants, synthetic refrigerants damage the atmosphere if they’re leaking or released. They impact climate change. Hugely.

People don’t know enough about synthetic refrigerants and their dangers. Appropriate government regulation is lacking. Then there’s bad practice – accidental or deliberate leaks and releases, often from poor installation or shoddy maintenance of refrigerant-bearing equipment.

Big or small, these leaks are always harmful to the environment. And every year, only 8% of recoverable synthetic refrigerants are properly recovered. If a kilo of certain heat-pump refrigerant escapes, that's the same impact as burning 1000 litres of petrol in your car. So collectively, we need to change that number.

Refrigerants make up around 10% of global CO2 emissions. That's three times the amount produced by aviation & shipping. So stopping the release of synthetic refrigerants into the atmosphere is an action we can take as a society right now to fight global warming. The technology exists. Change is possible.

New Zealand's government is aiming for a 35% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. At Cool-Safe, we’re targeting a 90% reduction by 2035.

By building New Zealand’s first plasma plant to destroy F-gases onshore. By introducing a national, industry-wide Buy-Back Scheme to maximise refrigerant recovery. By becoming New Zealand’s Product Stewardship Organisation as we move from voluntary to regulated collection. And by helping everyone in New Zealand to understand how they can play their part.

Find out below what you can do.

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