Does my old refrigerator need to be pumped out?

[blonder]

We are having a new refrigerator delivered Monday.
The place we bought our new one from is charging us $50 to get read of the old one.
They said something about having to pump out the freon in it or something like that.

Is that true or do they just haul it to the dump?

[Repair-man]

As of 1995, all refrigeration units must have the refrigerant reclaimed before the unit can be trashed. A service company must do this with specialized equipment. Since this ruling caused most of us to have to buy very expensive reclaiming equipment, the cost has to be passed on to the customer.

You can thank your federal government (EPA) for this surcharge. After all the hysteria regarding the elimination of Freon 12 in 1994 and changing all the laws and restrictions, it has later been determined that R-12 was not as big a contributor to global warming as thought. I saw this as a strategy by Dupont De Nemours to invent and market the new refrigerant. (R134a)