Isle of Wight Council is installing battery bins at its household recycling centres

(05/08/2009)

Isle of Wight Council is installing battery bins at its three household recycling centres at Lynnbottom (outskirts Newport), Forest Road (Newport) and Afton (Freshwater). Visitors put their disused batteries in these grey collection bins, which are then sent away for recycling.

The disused batteries are collected by a specialist recycling firm. The batteries are stripped down and drained to leave just their metal casing which is then melted or dissolved.

The metal that's produced can then be recycled into a variety of items which could be anything from more batteries to frying pans to DVD players.

The batteries are collected by waste battery service G & P Batteries through a scheme by Valpak. Car batteries are also collected at the civic amenity sites but this is separate to the household battery bin.

Homes in the UK throw away an astonishing 600m household batteries every year. It's not just your typical type of household battery that can be recycled, such as AAs and AAAs. Residents can also hand in disused laptop batteries, hearing aid batteries and mobile phone batteries.

Isle of Wight Council Cabinet member for the Environment and Transport Edward Giles said "The council actively encourages feedback from residents and one area that did often come up when talking about waste was what to do with old batteries. People do care about the environment and these new battery recycling bins are another tool to help divert waste from landfill".

Related categories:  Batteries recycling   Pollution control technologies