Page 19 - February 2020

Action goes greener with Daikin

Refrigerant Reclaim Programme

Action extends its partnership with
Daikin in a ground-breaking new project:

reclaiming and reusing refrigerant from
the Group’s refurbished stores.

eadquartered in the Netherlands, Action is a
fast-growing international non-food discounter,
with over 1,400 stores across the Netherlands,
HLuxembourg, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria and
Poland. In its stores, the discounter sells more than 6,000 different
products, mainly non-food. While offering its customers good
quality products at surprisingly low prices, Action continuously
explores new ways to reduce its environmental impact, such as
the latest initiative.

Creating a CirCular eConomy
for refrigerants
During the first half of 2019, the two companies collaborated
in an exercise to recover R410A refrigerant gas from 12 Action
stores which were being refurbished, reusing the reclaimed gas in
10 new Action stores across Europe.
This process is certified by Daikin to assure Action of both
the quality and quantity of the reclaimed refrigerant, a process
endorsed through assessment by an independent laboratory.
The reclaimed refrigerant used has the same quality as virgin
refrigerant and meets AHRI700 standards. An independent audit
process also ensures that the quantity of reclaimed gas from the
Action stores is allocated administratively to the factory charge of
the units installed in selected new Action stores.
Michiel Coolen, Action Group Construction Manager says:
“By setting up this circular economy of refrigerants within our own
store network we are able to further reduce our environmental impact.
Instead of producing more waste by disposing of the old refrigerant
and producing something new, we use what is available. In this way
we create a closed circle of refrigerant use within the Action network”
Mr. Toshitaka Tsubouchi, Vice-president of Daikin Europe says:
“As an industry, we are only at the start of our journey to create a
circular economy of refrigerant supply, usage, recovery and reclamation.
We highly value Action and the fact that they are open to take initiatives
that will change the retail and HVAC market. We hope to inspire many
others to make the same positive choice and to help us to recover the
huge quantity of available refrigerant in existing installations.”

reClaimed refrigerant Certified stores
Following on from the success of this pilot project, Action and Daikin
will recover refrigerant gas from a further 50 Action stores scheduled
for refurbishment over the coming years for reuse in new-build stores.
In this way, the new Action stores will fully support the circular
economy of refrigerants, lowering their environmental impact and
avoiding the production of new refrigerants.
Through this initiative, Action and Daikin has set a powerful example
for all stakeholders, both in retail sector and HVACR industry.

For more information on Certified Reclaimed Refrigerant Allocation,
please visit www.daikin.eu/building-a-circular-economy