Published by Stephen Roper on Tagged environment

New Legislation to ensure all battery retailers that sell over 32kg of batteries per year provide collection and recycling facilities comes into effect this month. The new rules will help deal with the hundreds of tonnes used batteries that are polluting Britain’s landfill sites every year.

For consumers, all batteries from AA to mobile phone batteries must be separated from household rubbish and disposed of correctly in designated recycling bins in shops or other recycling points. In the near future it’s also expected that battery pickups will become available to consumers on kerbside collections.

Any retailer selling more than 32kg of batteries per year will have to provide a collection, recycling service and disposal of old batteries, this is the equivalent of 1 pack of 4 AA batteries per day.

The new rules are created to deal with the 800,000 tonnes of car batteries, 160,000 tonnes of consumer batteries and 190,000 tonnes of industrial batteries that are sold in the EU each year. When batteries are dumped and are burned they contribute to air pollution and at landfill the metals leach into the soil.

Updated 26th Jan 10