Battery Recycling

We are pleased to announce that you can now bring your batteries to RE:SOURCE for recycling. 

It is estimated that up to 20,000 tonnes of batteries are landfilled in the UK every year.  Batteries contain harmful metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, zinc, manganese and lithium.  It can be damaging to the environment to simply throw these in the bin as they are sent to landfill, where they can leak these harmful substances into the surrounding soil.

When batteries begin to deteriorate in the soil, the leaked materials can also end up in water supplies, which can pollute seas and rivers, damaging natural habitats.  Burning batteries is also a bad idea since the released gases are toxic and cause pollution, as well as ozone damage.

Recycling prevents batteries going to landfill, and helps recover thousands of tonnes of valuable metals like nickel, cobalt and silver. This reduces the need to mine new materials, which saves resources, time and labour.  The energy used to manufacture household batteries is 50 times greater than the electrical energy they produce when being discharged!

Almost every wireless household item will use a battery and the average household uses approximately 20 – 30 batteries per year.  Be aware that you can recycle the battery next time you’re going to get rid of an old mobile phone or laptop!

Once batteries are collected and sent to the recycling facility, the materials are separated by type.  A high-temperature process melts reusable metals like nickel, lead, iron, cobalt and cadmium from the batteries to be re-used again in new batteries or in stainless steel.

The process begins by preparing the batteries; they are drained and dismantled before being placed in a furnace. Paper, plastic, gel and other non-metals are vaporized at high temperature, leaving only the useful metals.

In 2009 the UK only collected and recycled 3% of portable batteries whereas neighbouring countries such as France had achieved recycling rates of 33%!  The UK Waste Batteries and Accumulators Regulations which were introduced in 2009 set targets of 25% by 2012 and 45% by 2016.

RE:SOURCE has a battery collection point in the foyer of their store where any portable household batteries can be recycled.  The batteries must be discharged and please place tape over the pole ends of any lithium batteries.  Car batteries are unable to be recycled at RE:SOURCE.