How many pints of milk and cans of beer once sat in all this?
asserted
cans → sit → this
How much cheese and yoghurt lived to fight another day thanks to this forgotten army?
asserted
cheese → live → army
Once the gleaming guardians of food hygiene in umpteen kitchens, these mouldy old fridges are now a threat both to health and the environment.
And I am looking at a staggering 80,000 of them, piled several storeys high and stretching into the distance.
asserted
I → gleam → distance
It’s Mount Chillymanjaro here in Newport, Gwent.
asserted
It → ’ → Newport
Thick steel gates, locked firmly shut, carry signs warning that the huge white sprawl inside this yard is actually hazardous waste.
asserted
sprawl → lock → yard
That is because fridges, unlike other old household appliances, still contain gases, oil and other toxic substances.
asserted
fridges → contain → gases
Not that anyone inside the plant is doing anything about it.
asserted
anyone → do → it
The last owners of the site, Unimetals, went into liquidation nearly a year ago, with the loss of 600 jobs around the country.
asserted
owners → go → country
Now a solitary guard sits in a hut, though it’s the last place anyone would want to break in to and the fridges are not going to make a run for it.
asserted
fridges → sit → it
Nor is there much chance of bored youngsters climbing over the perimeter wall since all this is well beyond the checkpoints and barriers which control entry to the docks.
asserted
which → climb → docks
A staggering 80,000 abandoned fridges are piled several storeys high inside an industrial estate in Newport, Gwent
Unimetals, the previous owners of the site, went into liquidation nearly a year ago, with the loss of 600 jobs around the country
asserted
Unimetals → abandon → country
The owners of the land, Associated British Ports, tell me that they are ‘in advanced negotiations with an experienced third party to take over the site’ and that ‘in the interim, the material is being managed responsibly’.
asserted
material → tell → interim
As this sits inside an industrial estate, no residents have to overlook this mess.
asserted
residents → sit → mess
However, aerial footage taken by a local news agency’s drone shows the astonishing scale of the problem.
asserted
footage → take → problem
felt by millions across Britain because this vast dumping ground is also a very serious blockage to solving an increasingly unsightly problem: the spread of Britain’s freezer mountains.
asserted
ground → feel → mountains
Cooling machinery is much harder to recycle than any other household appliance because of the need to extract the gases which generate cold air, usually pentane or ammonia or ozone-depleting CFC (chlorofluorocarbon).
asserted
which → cool → air
They also contain a quantity of oil and precious metals which must be removed.
asserted
which → contain → oil
Only then can each big white box be put through a crusher which will separate the rest into plastic, glass and foam for recycling.
asserted
which → put → recycling
Every year, we throw away an estimated three million cooling appliances, according to Government data.
uncertain
we → throw → data
A substantial proportion of those would, in the past, have been brought to this plant in Newport.
asserted
proportion → bring → Newport
Now it is not only sitting idle but it has this huge backlog clogging up the yard.
asserted
it → sit → yard
Old fridges still contain gases, oil and other toxic substances, which are a threat to health and the environment
Robert Hardman visits the site where tens of thousands of fridges have been abandoned after a recycling firm collapsed
Ordinarily, the other nine recycling plants around the country would have absorbed the extra work – but then came further serious complications.
asserted
complications → contain → work
First, the fridge recycling centre at Darlaston in the West Midlands had a fire in February followed by ongoing technical issues which have dragged on ever since.
asserted
which → recycle → issues
Another blaze at a plant in Thetford, Norfolk, in April reduced national capacity again as summer loomed.
asserted
summer → reduce → capacity
Fridges are not as inert as they look.
asserted
they → look → ?
Never forget it was a faulty fridge which ignited the ghastly Grenfell Tower tragedy of 2017.
asserted
which → forget → 2017
Two further factors have played a part, too.
asserted
factors → play → part
This summer’s heatwave and even, it transpires, the football World Cup have led to a spike in fridge purchases.
asserted
Cup → transpire → purchases
Fridges are more likely to go wrong in summer and new appliances usually eject old ones.
asserted
appliances → go → ones
The way the system ought to work is that you take your old fridge or freezer to a council tip, or you pay the local authority to collect it, or the vendor of your new one takes away the old one (which accounts for 50 per cent of all dead fridges).
asserted
which → work → fridges
All these appliances then go to specialist recycling centres which, in turn, are paid via a ‘producer compliance scheme’ or PCS.
asserted
which → go → scheme
In effect, the fridge-makers pay for the pulping of all these products according to the tonnage of equipment they have put into the marketplace.
uncertain
they → pay → marketplace
No one can entirely agree on who is to blame, as the industry and local authorities call on the Government to step in while ministers bat the issue elsewhere.
asserted
ministers → agree → issue
Ultimately, responsibility lies with all of us since we all like to demand lower prices for white goods which we are increasingly keen on replacing.
asserted
we → lie → goods
If, at the first sign of a blocked filter, our instinct is to buy a new model rather than call a repair man, then we are all adding to the problem.
asserted
we → block → problem
Thick steel gates carry signs warning that the huge white sprawl of fridges inside this yard is actually hazardous waste
The result is that dozens of councils have a huge backlog of old units.
asserted
dozens → carry → units
In some cases, they have either stopped or significantly reduced collecting any more fridges for now.
asserted
they → stop → fridges
That means that some people then pay cowboy operators to get rid of an appliance.
asserted
people → mean → appliance
Or, worse still, they just cut out the middle man and fly-tip it themselves.
asserted
they → cut → it
From remote farmland to inner-city back streets, few parts of Britain have been spared a large yellowing plastic box mysteriously landing in the dead of night.
‘What we are seeing now is a system failure,’ says Jon Hubbard, chair of the neighbourhoods committee of the Local Government Association which represents 316 councils across England.
‘The system has always operated with very little contingency and, with three facilities out of action, there simply isn’t enough spare capacity to cope.
asserted
system → spar → action
…and 30 more, not listed.
The Aporia
