A new standard for refrigerants from Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA) has been released last week and is accepting applications for certification.
GECA’s Refrigerants standard has been updated, with revised criteria to set new environmental benchmarks and reflect industry changes. Refrigerant manufacturers can choose to have their products certified against this standard to demonstrate their environmental, health and ethical credentials.
Manufacturers who meet GECA’s standard will also meet the requirements for the “refrigerant impacts” credit in the “emissions” category of the Green Building Council of Australia’s Green Star “Design & As Built” and “Interiors” ratings tools.
The standard covers refrigerants used in domestic and industrial air conditioning systems, domestic and industrial refrigerators, and vehicle air conditioning systems.
Refrigerants commonly used in air conditioning and refrigeration have significantly contributed to global warming in addition to ozone depletion. While ozone-depleting CFC and HCFC compounds have been slowly phased out of use, many of the HFC and other compounds used to replace the original CFC refrigerants also contribute to the global warming problem.
GECA’s new standard requires that refrigerants must have an ozone depletion potential equal to zero, as well as a global warming potential of less than 10. The standard also sets out requirements for packaging, which must be easily recyclable or subject to a product stewardship take-back arrangement with the manufacturer or agent.
A copy of the standard is available on the GECA website at www.geca.org.au .
Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA) runs Australia’s only independent, not-for-profit, multi-sector ecolabelling program and is the only Australian member of the Global Ecolabelling Network (GEN). It develops standards against which products can be independently audited by GECA’s JAS-ANZ accredited conformity assessment bodies (CABs). Its standards are developed following ISO 14024 principles for global best practice in ecolabelling.
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