Schneider Electric is developing three-stage proposals to recover devices containing SF₆ gas at end of life:

• The countries concerned give the exact location of the devices on their clients' sites.
• Schneider Electric makes them a proposal to recover the devices.
• The recovered devices are treated under the best environmental conditions to ensure that all the SF₆ gas they contain is neutralised.

Sulphur hexafluoride or SF₆ is a gas used for breaking and insulation. Schneider Electric has been using an average of 400 grams of SF₆ per product since 1973 in its medium-voltage devices such as circuit breakers and switches. SF₆ has the following advantages:

• excellent gas for quenching the electrical arc that occurs when contacts open at medium voltage;
• very good insulator: SF₆ is twice as effective as air, which makes it possible to reduce the size of devices;
• colourless, inert, non-toxic, non-flammable. It poses no danger to employees;
• it does not contribute to the destruction of the ozone layer.

However, if SF₆ gas is not recovered at end of life, it may escape into the atmosphere and contribute to climate warming: its contribution to the greenhouse effect is 24,000 times more powerful than CO₂.

Hermetically sealed SF₆ mainly poses an environmental risk at end of life, when the devices containing it are no longer used. Although the Group is not obliged by the regulations to treat this waste, it offers its customers a solution for neutralising the SF₆ in devices sold between 1975 and 1985.
The first countries to launch such a proposal were Australia and France. The purpose was to recover 5% of the devices sold by Schneider Electric brands between 1975 and 1985 in order to recycle their various components: steel, copper, resin and SF₆.

Sponsors Pilot group	Electrical distribution services manager Medium-voltage products department manager End-of-life services manager
Scope	Sales representatives and services managers in 10 countries
Calculation	Number of devices recovered from the installed base of Schneider Electric brands in the country between 1975 and 1985 Average country performances
Reporting	Biannual