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What can I do with used disposable batteries? Question
What can I do with used up disposable batteries, such as AA/AAA?
It used to be that these had to be separated so they can be put through a special remediation process. However, apparently that was driven by heavy metals used in the batteries, and nowadays they don't use the heavy metals anymore, so apparently many places just send them to the landfill. However, even without heavy metals, they do have some significant chemical content in them.
Is it reasonable to just throw these into the regular trash? Or is there some better alternative?
I live in the US and my area does not have any requirements about battery disposal. I asked the city and they told me that just dumping it in the garbage bin is fine.
3 answers
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I asked the city and they told me that just dumping it in the garbage bin is fine.
I doubt you're going to have a more authoritative answer than that. I take mine to the help desk at Staples or the local hardware store, but I think it's part of a program set up by the local government.
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In Sweden (and probably most of Europe?) you simply hand them in for the battery recycling at your local recycling station.
People would get shocked if you threw batteries in the normal garbage. We stopped doing that in the early 1980s somewhere and the transition from NiCd to Alkaline and NiMH didn't change this. So to me it sounds like you live in some development country where garbage recycling is lagging 40 years behind...
It is even frowned upon to place batteries together with the electronic junk recycling and it's preferable to remove them and recycle them separately.
There's typically a little bin at each recycling station where you can leave them and they accept all chemistries including Li/Ion variants. The only thing you can't hand in there is big stuff like car batteries, which would have to be taken to the recycling center.
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Extra bins to dispose them are not only present at recycling centers. Each shop/supermarket that sells those is obliged to have a place where to return them to.
Sometimes you also can ask at the information counter to take them back.
(At least in Europe it is law, applicability in the US maybe limited, but asking someone in a shop if they take them back might bring results)
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