Feeling flat about batteries
For years I have been hoarding flat batteries, knowing they were not meant to go to landfill because of the toxicity of the chemicals and heavy metals they contain. When a battery casing disintegrates, toxic chemicals can leach into the environment. That’s why batteries and their packaging display warnings to not dispose of them in landfills. Another direct hazard of discarding batteries in household waste is that they can cause a fire in the collection truck or the recycling plant.
And surely there must be some way to recover and re-use those chemicals and heavy metals? This would soften the environmental impact of extracting more raw materials that will also most likely end up in a landfill. Exciting technological advances in resource recovery and recycling are happening all over the world. An excellent example is our own Kiwi start-up company Mint Innovation which has developed the world’s first bio-refinery, using micro-organisms to scavenge precious metals from complex e-waste streams. They can produce 100% recycled, cyanide-free metals including gold, palladium, copper, silver, and other metals such as tin, zinc, iron and nickel.
Anyway, back to my batteries. Years ago optimistic me, certain that the chemicals in batteries could be recovered for re-use, searched for a collection/recycling option. It wasn’t easy to find – the easiest alternative at the time was the occasional Hazard Waste collection drive from WBOPDC (and I’m not sure how much of that would have been recycled anyway). So I gave up looking and starting hoarding.
Today I decided to track down what our local council is doing about battery recycling. To my delight I discovered that I can drop off my spent batteries at the Ōmokoroa library, into a white plastic collection bin just inside the door. The only kind they do not accept are car batteries. So in went my entire hoard – AAA, AA, D, C, old cellphone batteries, watch batteries, garage remote batteries, calculator batteries, TV remote batteries, kitchen scale batteries, CR2032s, CR2016, LR44, 9-volt, 6-volt, NiCd, NiMH…… you get the picture. The library’s collection bin is now quite full.
You might not be too worried about the environmental impact of used batteries – they’re small after all – how much of a problem can such a small, occasionallydiscarded item be? In fact, the cumulative picture is pretty big. A 2012 report commissioned by Auckland Council estimated that 1120 tonnes of zinc carbon and zinc chloride batteries and 4220 tonnes of alkaline manganese batteries are imported into New Zealand every year. That’s a mountain of batteries. We can assume that a similar volume becomes waste every year. And these are only the cylindrical dry cell nonrechargeable ones.
Of course, the ideal solution would be to not use batteries at all, which is not going to happen anytime soon. Too many of our convenient modern devices depend on them. But maybe, just maybe, with our awareness of the impact of batteries on the environment, the next time we go out to purchase a battery-driven consumer item we might be motivated to instead seek a battery-free alternative. Or even better, we might question whether we really need that item at all.