AAA afterlife

Battery recycling comes to the doorstep

In what could be the beginning of the end for Britain’s throwaway battery scandal, recycling trials have started for 350,000 households across the country. It’s an initiative by WRAP (the government-backed Waste & Resources Action Programme), and it ties with existing ‘doorstep collection’ schemes for paper, glass and so on. Just one more separate bag or box, then, for people to remember to put out on the right day. Rather endearingly, WRAP hopes that they’ll be encouraged to do so by the “iconic images, striking colours and positive messages on the leaflets and bags”. Plans are also in the pipeline to trial the collection of spent batteries in other ways, such as via drop-off points in supermarkets.

Shouldn’t we all be using rechargeable batteries, though? Perhaps; but they don’t suit every use - as any cyclist who’s had their lights die miles from home knows all too well. And rechargeables seem to be too much hassle for the average UK household, which gets through more than 20 ‘throwaway’ AA, AAA and other batteries a year.

That means we’ve been sending some 600 million of them to landfill, amounting to an annual 22,000 tonnes. It can’t go on - not least because a forthcoming EU Batteries Directive is expected to require that at least 25% should be recycled by 2012. Our European neighbours have more experience of what works best for them: they’ve been collecting used batteries for years.

Until now, one of the big blocks in Britain has been the lack of anywhere to take them, for separation into re-useable materials (a recent Bristol-based experiment foundered mainly for this reason - see ‘Switch to positive’, GF44). G&P Batteries Ltd has now opened the UK’s first recycling plant for the most common single use batteries, but other types collected in the current trials (which cover pretty much everything except lead-acid car-type batteries) will still have to be sent elsewhere in Europe after they’ve been sorted. - Roger East

22 May 2006

Roger East