Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Free Refrigerator Replacement

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 14 2008 (IPS) - Brazilian electricity companies are donating more than 30,000 new refrigerators each year to poor families as part of the national plan to eliminate chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which damage the Earth's ozone layer. This number will increase because the Energy Efficiency Law, modified in 2007, requires energy companies to set aside 0.5 percent of their net income for technological research and renewal of refrigerators, twice the requirement set in 2000, said Rafael Lourenço dos Santos, regulation specialist with the National Electrical Energy Agency.

Brazil banned CFCs in new products produced nationally in 1999, and in imports in 2007, but there are still 11 million old refrigerators that contain the ozone-depleting gases. Those refrigerators can only be recharged with CFCs recycled in regeneration plants, according to Tatiana Zanetti, of the Environment Ministry's ozone unit.