Don’t bin your batteries: Advice on new recycling rules
The Lincolnshire Waste Partnership is advising residents and retailers of new national regulations which mean batteries should no longer be thrown in the bin.
The UK Waste Batteries and Accumulators Regulations 2009 came into force last May and, from today (1 February 2010), facilities must now be provided to enable the recycling of batteries instead.
Batteries can now be returned to most major supermarkets and some high street chain stores which will have special collection points. Any of the county’s twelve household waste recycling centres also accept them.
Countrywide, members of the public are therefore being encouraged to separate their batteries, helping minimise the harmful effects they have in landfill.
Councillor Geoffrey Hazelwood, Chairman of the Lincolnshire Waste Partnership, said:
“Batteries contain various hazardous metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, zinc, manganese and lithium and can be harmful to the environment if they are disposed of in landfill. Recycling recovers materials that can be used to make new products, as well as saving natural resources and reducing the need to mine more.
“We want to make as many people as possible aware of these new national regulations; Lincolnshire residents are already excellent recyclers and this is a further opportunity to add to this, reduce our landfill and improve our environment. As well as ‘take-back’ facilities being provided by some retailers, all of the household waste recycling centres across the county can also accept batteries.”
Distributors, including retailers, who sell over 32kg of portable batteries each year from any individual store, must provide a ‘take-back’ facility for waste batteries.
The Batteries Regulations aim to significantly increase UK collection and recycling of used portable batteries from the current rate of about 3% to 25% by 2012, rising to 45% by 2016.