How other countries run refrigerant take-back

Why take-back exists at all

A refrigerant's working life ends one of two ways: it leaks out, or the equipment is scrapped with the charge still in it. The second is entirely preventable, and it is where recovery schemes aim.

The economics are the difficulty. Recovering gas costs a technician's time, equipment and transport, and the recovered product is worth something only if there is a reclaimer who will process it back to specification and a market that will buy the result. Remove any link in that chain and recovery becomes a cost with no return — at which point, absent regulation or subsidy, it does not happen.

Every scheme below is an attempt to solve that same problem, and the differences between them are essentially differences in who pays.

The four models

The United States works by making the alternative illegal: venting is prohibited, and a reclaimer must certify that reprocessed gas meets the standard before it can be resold. The AIM Act's phase-down then squeezes virgin supply, which lifts the value of reclaimed product — regulation and economics pushing the same direction.

The EU is the most aggressive. Quota is denominated in CO₂e rather than tonnes, so high-GWP gases consume it disproportionately and the market moves itself toward lower-GWP alternatives. Cutting the leak-check threshold to 5 tonnes CO₂e brings far smaller systems into scope than before.

Australia is the interesting one for anyone thinking about India, because it does not rely primarily on enforcement. A levy on gas entering the country funds a rebate paid to the contractor who returns recovered refrigerant. The person doing the physical work gets paid for it, which is the part most schemes miss.

Japan puts the duty on the equipment manager rather than only the technician, and added direct penalties in 2019 after recovery rates stalled.

What they actually achieve

This is the part worth being honest about, because take-back is often discussed as though it were a solved problem.

Australia's environment department, citing its own sector research, has reported that only around 18% of the refrigerant remaining in equipment at end of life is recovered for destruction. Japan's end-of-life recovery rate has hovered around 40% against a 50% target it set for 2020. These are two of the better-organised systems in the world, both running for decades.

So the realistic reading is that even a well-designed scheme with a funded rebate recovers a minority of what is out there. The gap is not mainly regulatory; it is that equipment gets scrapped by people with no connection to the refrigerant industry, and a scheme only reaches the ones it can find.

There is also a cautionary history. Under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism, credits for destroying HFC-23 — a by-product of HCFC-22 manufacture — became so valuable that they created an incentive to produce more of the parent gas. The mechanism was suspended for that reason. It is a standing reminder that paying for destruction can, if the incentive is badly shaped, pay for production.

Where India stands, and where we stand

India's ODS Rules do provide for reclamation and destruction, with reclaimers and destroyers required to register with the authority. The legal scaffolding exists.

What does not exist is a commercial market. There is no levy, no rebate, no network of reclaimers competing for recovered gas, and no established route by which a technician in Secunderabad turns a recovered cylinder into money. Effort under India's phase-out programme has concentrated instead on training technicians in good servicing practice — which is sensible, because reducing what leaks out is cheaper than recovering it afterwards.

So, stated plainly and for the avoidance of doubt:

• We do not buy back refrigerant, and we do not accept old or recovered gas
• We do not sell reclaimed refrigerant. Every cylinder we supply is virgin product in original sealed packaging from the manufacturer
• Reclamation is a separately regulated activity requiring its own registration — it is not something a distributor may simply decide to do

If a seller offers to buy your old gas, ask what they intend to do with it. In a market with no reclaim infrastructure, the honest answers are limited, and one of the dishonest ones is that it gets decanted and resold to somebody else as new. That is precisely how counterfeit and contaminated refrigerant enters circulation. Reclamation in India, in full and how to spot counterfeit gas.

If India does establish a functioning scheme, this page will change. Until then we would rather tell you it does not exist than imply we are part of one.

Related: Reclamation in India · R-22 after 2025 · Spotting counterfeit gas · Kigali Amendment