Battery Recycling – How, Why and Where?

Battery Recycling

With the average household producing around 1 tonne of rubbish every year. It has never been more important for us each to do our bit for the environment and recycle what we can.  In our last blog we spoke about mattress recycling, and this week we are talking about what to do with old batteries.

Batteries come in all shapes and sizes, and each different type of battery has uses that they can be made into once they have been recycled.  Some of the different varieties and their uses include:

Lead Acid Batteries

• Battery Use – Cars, forklifts
• Recovered Materials – Lead, Polypropylene and Gypsum (from the acid).
• Potential Uses – Lead acid batteries, Battery cases – other products, Agriculture and other industries (filler for plasterboard and washing powder)

Nickel Cadmium

• Battery Use – Power tools
• Recovered Materials – Nickel, Steel, Cadmium
• Potential Uses – Metal Plating, Steel Industry, Batteries – restricted use

Zinc-based Batteries

• Battery Use – Domestic
• Recovered Materials – Steel, Zinc, Manganese
• Potential Uses – Steel Industry, Many Industrial Applications, Many Industrial Applications.

Nickel Metal Hydride

• Battery Use – Mobile phones
• Recovered Materials – Nickel, Steel.
• Potential Uses – Steel Industry

Lithium Ion

• Battery Use – Laptops
• Recovered Materials – Cobalt, Steel.
• Potential Uses – Electronics, battery, paint manufacture, Steel Industry.

How can I recycle batteries?

Battery Recycling is easier than many people may think. There are many battery recycling points throughout the UK, the main places include supermarkets and libraries. Go to recycle now  to find out where your closest battery recycling points are.

Sorting batteries before recycling helps the recycling process. This is because batteries are made from many different  components such as lithium-ion, zinc or nickel cadmium. Sorting batteries into their different chemistry types means more of the original material can be recovered to make new products.  There are different ways of recycling batteries but the aim is always the same – recovering as much of the raw material used to make the battery as possible so that it can be used again to make something new.