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Local initiative keeps toxic batteries out of landfill Bristol’s battery recycling project has exceeded its own target - and could inspire other local authorities to follow its example, if a way can be found to reprocess the batteries locally. Set up as a one-year pilot scheme under city council auspices [GF37], it managed to collect 12 tonnes by last September through a mix of kerbside collection and ‘bring banks’ - well over the 10-tonne target. Co-ordinator Isobel Downey attributes this success to its simplicity, and the constant publicity it received through the local press and shops. People were asked to put spent batteries into branded paper bags, whose free availability via retailers helped keep profile high. The bags can then be put into householders’ existing kerbside collection boxes, keeping the batteries conveniently separated from the usual paper, tins and bottles. Instead of ending up in landfill sites - where their toxic components such as cadmium and lead can leach out into the ground - the batteries were then sent for recycling locally. At least, that was the plan - and, in the absence of any existing battery recycling facility in the UK, Britannia Zinc agreed to take on the job by making minor changes to its smelter in Avonmouth. A trial batch of batteries was put through the smelter and significant amounts of zinc, iron and carbon were collected, all of which could be used in making road building materials. However, Britannia Zinc closed down half way through the battery pilot scheme, as part of Australian parent company MIM Holdings’ exit from its loss-making operations in the UK and Germany. The batteries then had to be sent to mainland Europe instead, which cast doubt on the viability of the whole scheme, both in financial terms (although the pilot programme was heavily dependent on funding partners) and environmentally. The importance of local reprocessing was emphasised by spokeswoman Abby Edwards after the pilot scheme ended. Admitting that “we can't say yet whether it would be economically feasible without additional funding”, she warned that shipping batteries abroad for reprocessing was not cost effective. What’s more, having to do so made it “environmentally a fine balance as to whether we are doing as much good as bad”. - Kath Stathers

28 January 2004

Kath Stathers