Disposal of fridges and freezers

Most waste fridges and freezers will be classified as hazardous waste due to their CFC content. It is therefore essential that these are disposed of correctly in order to comply with the Hazardous Waste Regulations 2005

Please e-mail janet.shippen@manchester.ac.uk who will provide a fridge/freezer collection note and arrange subsequent collection/disposal. Please contact x65965 for any assistance in this.

All fridges/freezers need to be accompanied with a decontamination certificate before they can be collected by the Campus Cleansing Unit (CCU) even if they have not been used in a lab. This includes fridges/freezers that have been used in staff kitchens.

Most fridges/freezers are collected by CCU Unit and stored securely at the Environmental Services Depot prior to collection by external contractors (see below). See here for a video of the recycling process.

Large items such as -80 freezers and chest freezers may be too large for Campus Cleansing to remove in which case a direct collection via external contractors needs to be arranged. In these instances please contact simon.atkinson@manchester.ac.uk to make arrangements – you will need to provide technical details of the item/s as well as a photo and the weight of the item.

Disposal costs

Our waste fridges and freezers are collected by Stone Group who currently offer a free collection service for most items. As such there are no collection/disposal costs for most items at present. However, Stone are unable to take some items such as display fridges/cabinets so alernative contractors may need to be used for the collection of these items and charges will be incurred depending on the item.