Air-conditioner Environmental Program

Air-conditioners contain many resources: metals like iron, copper, and aluminum, and resin (plastic). This means that it’s important to use resources efficiently and reduce the amount of waste from used air-conditioners.

Iron, copper, and aluminum account for about 80% of an air-conditioner’s weight. One residential air-conditioner contains the equivalent of 250 empty aluminum cans worth of aluminum and 240 10-yen coins worth of copper. Every year in Japan, about 7 million residential air-conditioners and 700,000 commercial air-conditioners are sold. We must make efficient use of resources by reducing the amount of materials used in these air-conditioners, designing products that are easy to disassemble, recycling by collecting and taking apart used products, and reusing parts when possible. As well, making efficient use or resources will help reduce the amount of waste from used air-conditioners.

Japan’s Home Appliances Recycling Law went into effect in April 2001.
The law covers four products: air-conditioners, TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines.
Retail outlets collect the used appliances and send these to the manufacturer, which recycles them.
Daikin’s residential air-conditioners are covered by the law. Consumers are responsible for bearing the cost of transporting and recycling the residential air-conditioners at the end of their useful life.

We take used air-conditioners from customers, disassemble them, separate the materials, and then recycle these into raw materials.

1. Recover refrigerants

2. Take apart and separate into different materials

The separated materials are recycled as raw materials