Banks of ozone-depleting halogenated carbon compounds continue to be sources of emissions. Their contribution to current and future emissions, however, is highly uncertain, and this uncertainty obscures ongoing emissions attribution and undermines international efforts to evaluate global compliance with the Montreal Protocol. The paper by Lickley et al. presents a convincing and thorough method to assess the banks of several halocarbons and their emissions based on known atmospheric lifetimes and constrained by observed atmospheric concentrations. The authors demonstrate that the banks of the halocarbons under assessment are very likely larger than previous international assessments suggest, and that total production has been very likely higher than reported. These are most important results that will find their way in the next WMO ozone assessment and have to be considered in assessments of global warming.