Single-use-battery recycling?

[duneidieann.livejournal.com]

Hi, does anyone know of a place that accepts alkaline batteries for recycling? Whole Foods used to have a bucket to collect them but they no longer do. Staples seems to collect rechargeables only. I read the Somerville Household Hazardous Waste day info. and they seem to be interested only in car batteries and rechargeables. Thanks...

Comments

[forever-dreams.livejournal.com]

Check your hardware stores. I know mine takes batteries, but it's in Central Square so that might be a little too far for you.

[masswich.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that regular one-use batteries can be thrown away in the trash. They don't contain heavy metals anymore. Am I wrong?

[ron_newman]

Which store in Central Square?

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

This is my understanding as well. They're no longer considered hazardous waste since the manufacturers have greatly cut back on the amount of heavy metals used in their manufacture.

From http://www.duracell.com/en-US/battery-care-disposal.jspx : "Due to concerns about mercury in the municipal solid waste stream, we have voluntarily eliminated all of the added mercury from our alkaline batteries since 1993, while maintaining the performance you demand. Our alkaline batteries are composed primarily of common metals—steel, zinc, and manganese—and do not pose a health or environmental risk during normal use or disposal."

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I was assuming it's an environmental issue. After all, cans and bottles don't post a health risk in disposal, either, but we still recycle them.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Well, aluminium and steel recycling are actually profitable. It's easier and cheaper to produce them from recycled material than it is to produce them from ore mined from the ground.

Glass recycling gets kinda weird. In Europe, empty glass beer and soda bottles are sanitized and refilled. That was the case in the USA as well until fairly recently. I can't figure out why they don't do that here; it has to be cheaper than either making new glass bottles or making glass bottles from recycled material.

Some time in the 1950s-1960s, refillable glass soda bottles went away, and were replaced by the steel, and then aluminium, can, and the "no deposit, no return" glass and plastic bottles that are common today.

Roadside litter promptly shot up, as people tossed the empties out car windows. The solution was the mandated return of the bottle deposit in the 1970s in many states, such as Massachusetts.

[jadelennox]

I believe all hardware stores will take your batteries. Tufts has buckets scattered all over campus where you can drop batteries and cell phones. I think the Somerville library might take them; the Arlington library takes them sometimes.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

Yup, actually Reagan of all ppl put into place eliminating mercury and other nasties from alkaline batteries. They are not readily recyclable, as far as I know.

Lithium batteries are fucking nasty though, and should definitely be recycled.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

If anyone actually cares about the environment: buy rechargeables. Don't care about the environment? Well, over their lifespan, rechargeables cost less than 1% what alkalines would for the same amount of usage.

However, rechargeables are chock full of nasty things and should definitely be recycled if compromised/worn out.

[ron_newman]

Last time I went to Tags, they only wanted rechargeables.

[nathanjw]

There are a lot of moving parts to consider here - glass bottles break more than plastic bottles or cans, which is a cost all along the chain, and those of course can't be reused; weight of the bottles matters, and reuseable bottles are heavier than bottles intended to be single-use or crushed and recycled (and both are heavier than plastic or cans); the logistics of returning the bottles are pretty significant. Aluminum cans seem like a better idea all around - sturdier, stackable, opaque, and easier to recycle.

I wouldn't be surprised if aesthetics played into it as well - the reused bottles can get pretty worn. If you track down bottles of Mexican coke at Annas or some of the Indian colas like Thums Up[sic] at Guru or elsewhere, you can see the patina from reuse. Americans are annoyingly fastidious about their product packaging.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

What sucks about aluminum cans is that they flavor the contents to a much greater extent than glass or plastic do. There's a reason *good* beers only come in glass bottles.

I remember in the 1980s there was a newsstand near my college campus that sold coke in returnable 6.5 and 16 ounce thick glass bottles that had obviously been reused. The local pub I used to drink at just off-campus served a lot of their domestic beers in longneck bar bottles that had obviously been reused many times as well. I'm not sure when I stopped seeing longneck beer bottles that didn't have wear marks on them, but it was definitely by the mid-90s some time.

[nathanjw]

There's a reason *good* beers only come in glass bottles.
The craft beer world has gotten into canning in a big way lately. Beers I've had from cans include Harpoon IPA, Anderson Valley Summer Solstice, Butternuts Porkslap, Oskar Blues Dale's Pale Ale, and 21st Amendment's watermelon wheat (can't actually recommend that one). I think the prevalence of bottles in craft beer operations has had a lot more to do with the capital expense of canning equipment vs bottling equipment - until recently, canning wasn't economical unless you were producing beer on the scale of Coors.

Of course, this has gotten way, way off topic for dslj, but if you're interested, there's lively discussion of the subject over on Beer Advocate, for example.