A few years ago I had an air conditioner that pooped out on me. I replaced the unit, and went down to city hall and bought a disposal tag. I stuck the tag to my dead AC and put it on the curb the night before trash day. A few hours later the tag was on the curb, but the unit was not. Somebody had grabbed it, probably to strip out the copper in the condenser for scrap metal.
This story is what reminded me of that:
An Ohio man has pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Air Act by releasing a refrigerant into the air during the theft of dozens of air conditioning units.
Federal prosecutors say Martin Eldridge and others stole at least 49 units between August and October last year, releasing the refrigerant when tubing that connected units to houses and businesses was cut.
The 35-year-old Columbus man pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to one count of knowingly venting the refrigerant HCFC-22 into the environment. That refrigerant is sold under trade names including Freon.
Eldridge will serve 31 months in prison under terms of the plea. His attorney declined to comment.
I’m suspecting that the person who grabbed my AC didn’t bother to reclaim what freon was left in the system. Oh and I took the tag and put it on an old computer monitor that was just sitting in my garage, the trash men didn’t take it. So I was out the money I paid.
Where I live, we just set our junk on the curb with a price tag and phony phone number attached. 90% of the time, it’s been liberated by the next morning.
No fuss, no fee.
Anything that looks like it may have value is gone by the time the trash runs. The trash men take just about everything. I lined up 7 CRT monitors at the curb after a garage sale a few years ago. The neighbors didn’t take them, but the trash men did.
Copper’s got a raw value at ~$0.25 per ounce, even better when you consider it’s one of the heaviest metals, near lead in density. If you don’t separate the metal, copper, plastic, steel, in an AC unit is typically worth a bit less than $2/lb.
I’m currently decomissioning a dehumidifer, any HVAC-certified tech can extract the refriderant from a unit in minutes, and the new production of many of these gases is restricted causing value to rise–R-22 from my unit was worth around $100/lb, but being a portable off-the-shelf appliance, the value of the extracted gas paid for the tech’s time.