Make it last! – A Guide to Batteries 🔋 [Visual]

Chemicals from batteries which are incinerated or go to landfill may pollute lakes and streams, vaporise into the air, or leach into groundwater, exposing the environment to highly corrosive acids and bases. So it is best to make sure batteries are properly recycled and disposed of.

Don’t store dead batteries in a drawer at home. Dispose them keeping them in a separate container, otherwise they can contaminate the plastics, glass and cans. We don’t want contamination in the recyclables.

Below, we made a simple guide for you to know how to store your batteries so they last longer, how to test when are they truly empty and which devices might work with half-empty batteries before you can dispose of them.

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Recycling standard portable batteries such as the AA alkaline batteries powering a torch or a toy can yield a wealth of secondary materials such as iron, zinc and ferromanganese. However, no one has figured out a way to make this recycling profitable.

Unlike recyclers of other waste streams, those of alkaline and lithium ion batteries cannot extract more value from their feedstock than it costs them to process it.

How does your country encourage you to recycle batteries?

In Belgium, almost a quarter of batteries are collected from schools. Belgium’s battery collection organisation, Bebat, runs a programme that enables schools to collect points for each kilogramme of batteries collected. These points can be exchanged for prizes such as sports equipment and entry to museums.

In the Netherlands, consumers who return 10 batteries to be recycled at local collection points in supermarkets and other stores are entered into a nationwide monthly draw for €1,000 travel vouchers and other cash prizes.