Refrigerant Buy-Back Programme Announcement

The Trust for the Destruction of Synthetic Refrigerants (Recovery Trust) is excited to announce the launch of its Refrigerant Buy-Back Programme – the first of many initiatives aimed to reduce and ultimately eliminate the amount of synthetic refrigerant gases held onshore across Aotearoa.  

Synthetic Refrigerants (SRs) are used in a high percentage of everyday items - from household fridges to commercial food chillers in supermarkets and dairies; from domestic heat-pumps to IT server-room cooling systems or hospital equipment like MRIs; from family cars to industrial truck fleets. They are used in manufacturing processes for plastics, soaps and even medications and vaccines. Invisibly and unknown to most, SRs flows in equipment used throughout our lives, from maternity ward to mortuary. Once leaked or released, SRs are damaging to the atmosphere.

Recovery Trust has been disposing of New Zealand’s end-of-life refrigerants for almost thirty years. To date, an average of 35,000 kilograms per year of these F-gases have been recovered collectively through the Trust’s current collection network and shipped for destruction at appropriate offshore facilities. Recovery Trust’s Chair Richard Lauder acknowledges that this level of collection has been driven by industry wanting to do the right thing by the environment, without monetary reward.

Through an exciting and important initiative, the Trust is now able to support the industry by providing a financial incentive to reward those who are depositing end-of-life refrigerants at its collection sites, with an aim of increasing the amount of recovered refrigerants across New Zealand.

“We wish to reward those who recover refrigerants, and hope that individuals and businesses will use this scheme to get rid of any stored unwanted refrigerants in addition to gases recovered as a result of business-as-usual activities,” says Richard Lauder.

Commencing from 1 October 2022 the Trust will pay any person or company providing F-gass into its collection system a bounty of $15.00 + GST per kilogram (whole kilograms). There is also a bulk buy-back rate for recovered refrigerants in excess of 500kgs.

Janine Brinsdon, Recovery Trust’s Chief Executive, adds, “This Refrigerant Buy-Back Programme is one of many new initiatives the Trust has been developing over the past twelve months, and we look forward to launching additional new programmes in the near future as we continue to build our operational management team”.

How can you get involved?

Simply return your recovered refrigerants to Patton, Recovery Trust’s contracted collection providers. This can either be in person if you are located close to one of their nine locations, or via the Trust’s free courier transfer service. Patton will record the weight of refrigerants received. The bounty payment will be made by the Trust.

To maximise your recovery opportunity and the efficiency of our collection network, we recommend you accumulate the recovered refrigerants to a minimum of 10kg, wherever practical.

We will accept mixed refrigerants. However please note: if there is an excessive amount of non-synthetic refrigerant within your cylinder, we will still accept and destroy the refrigerants, but you will not receive the $15/kg bounty.

If you have bulk recovered or virgin refrigerants (in excess of 500 kilograms) please contact us directly for our bulk Refrigerant Buy-Back rates.

For more information, please contact Janine Brinsdon - Chief Executive, Trust for the Destruction of Synthetic Refrigerants, m: 021 337 870