Bradford's "fridge mountain" is set to disappear after an extra £40 million was granted to local authorities in England to recycle them.

Environment Minister Michael Meacher today said the money would help Bradford Council deal with the 6,000 old fridges waiting for recycling.

Bradford has its own giant fridge dump which is growing at an alarming rate following European Union rules making it illegal to dispose of untreated fridge material in landfill sites.

Since April the number of fridges waiting to be recycled in the city has increased from 1,000 to 6,000.

The dumped fridges, which give off CFC and HFC gases from insulation foam, are a major environmental concern as the pollutant gases are one of the biggest threats to the ozone layer.

John Hornby & Son - which deals with scrap metal, recycling, waste handling and construction aggregates - completed a multi-million-pound deal to install and operate a fridge recycling and gas recovery plant at the Old Crown Dye Works recycling centre in Bradford in April, but is still waiting for the delivery of the machine.

The end-of-life refrigerator processing plant has a capacity for processing more than 400,000 units a year - more than 20 times the number previously being disposed of using traditional disposal methods. It is expected that the machine will arrive in the next few weeks.

Company director Stephen Hillas, pictured, welcomed the cash boost.

He said: "I just hope that the red tape can be lifted soon so that the licence can be granted for the machine to function on the site."

Councillor David Ford (Green, Shipley West) said a lack of cohesion between central and local government led to the backlog of fridges awaiting recycling.

"Bradford Council has to be proactive at making links and exploring different ways to try to deal with the matter and it has to be imaginative about it," he said.

Mr Meacher said: "The £40 million fund follows the £6 million made available to local authorities for last year to deal with the backlog of fridges. The backlog will begin to disappear in October, thanks to the substantial investment in fridge recycling facilities in the UK."

Mr Meacher said five fridge-eating sites are in operation. Two, including the Bradford plant, are due to come on line in August, and a further three later this year. "I welcome the efforts made by local authorities in dealing with the challenge of storing and recycling old fridges," he said.