Ever wonder what happens to appliances you get rid of? Take a visit to a facility where JACO "demanufactures" appliances

While the U.S. Department of Energy didn't require states to make recycling mandatory for the $300 million cash for appliances rebate program, it "strongly encouraged" states to get as many old appliances off the grid as possible. Some states, like Michigan and Nevada, required consumers to recycle their appliances to get a rebate. Others, including Florida and New York, offered a bonus on top of the rebate with proof of recycling.

What's happening to all the used appliances that you and other consumers have replaced? To find out, Steven H. Saltzman, the editor of the Home & Garden blog and I headed to JACO Environmental's recycling facility in East Brunswick, New Jersey. JACO, based in Snohomish, Washington, is a partner in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Responsible Appliance Disposal Program, or RAD.

From the street, JACO's location resembles a nondescript office building, but inside is a 25,000-square-foot facility (photo 1, below) in which refrigerators and freezers are recycled according to the toughest recycling standards in the land. "You could fit what's left over at the end of the process into a 1-gallon Ziploc bag," said Tom Mayo, regional site manager at the JACO facility, which has eight full-time employees. (Among the refrigerators being recycled are a number of vintage models, like the one shown right, as well as some only a couple of years old.)

The East Brunswick facility, one of 20 JACO has in the United States (two more are scheduled to open in Akron, Ohio, and Syracuse, New York), processes about 600 refrigerators and freezers each week, double its rate from before the launch of phase 2 of New Jersey's cash for appliances program, when refrigerator rebates became available.

Many of the refrigerators and freezers get to JACO via Sears, which is one of two RAD retail partners (the other is Best Buy) and also a big promoter of cash for appliances. Other units are collected through New Jersey's Clean Energy Program, which also offers a $50 cash incentive to homeowners who have a working refrigerator or freezer hauled away and recycled by JACO.

Here's a look at the "demanufacturing" process, which takes about 45 minutes from start to finish.

Step 1: Appliances are unloaded from collection trucks and identified by type of refrigerant; those manufactured before 1996 likely contain R-12, a chlorofluorocarbon that's now listed as an ozone-depleting substance, or ODS. Doors are interior shelves and drawers are then removed.

Step 2 (photos 2 and 3 below): ODS-containing appliances are loaded onto a conveyor belt that takes them to a vacuum extractor, which removes their refrigerant and compressor oil without allowing any harmful fumes to escape into the air. Oil is cleaned and reused, often to run cement kilns. The refrigerant is stored in a half-ton tank, and eventually collected and incinerated at high temperatures by an EPA-approved hazardous-material destruction facility.

Step 3: The fluid-free units move on to another station, where the jaws of life—a huge, hydraulic tool—cuts out each unit's compressor (photo 4 below). The compressors are placed over a grated metal tank that collects any remaining drops of oil.

Step 4: The bottoms of the refrigerators are lopped off with a reciprocating saw, exposing their polyurethane foam-insulation walls (photo 5 below). This foam often contains CFC-11, another ODS.

Step 5: In one of the more labor-intensive phases of the operation, foam is removed with a tool called "chip-and-stick". The foam is bagged, sealed and eventually sent to an EPA-approved waste-to-energy facility (photo 6 below).

Step 6: Durable materials are separated and sold for reuse; steel ends up as rebar, glass becomes an aggregate in concrete, and plastics are used to make cell phones, laptops, and other equipment.

That's how JACO recycles a refrigerator or freezer. Unfortunately, this type of responsible demanufacturing happens with only 5 to 10 percent of old units, says the EPA.

What happens to the rest? We're investigating that now, so stay tuned.

—Daniel DiClerico

Essential information: Read more about recycling appliances you replace through cash for appliances.