After reading online that all Home Depot locations have a drop off for recycling batteries, I took a dead 9V power tool battery there to be recycled. After all, it would make sense that the store that's probably one of, if not the largest seller of power tools in the country would provide recycling for the large batteries that come with power tools, wouldn't it? After wandering around clueless in the Home Depot looking for the drop off bin, I asked a few employees, and they all said that they no longer do battery recycling. Looks like not enough money is made by recycling batteries.
If you want to know where you can recycle rechargable batteries, you can enter your address / zip code into http://www.rbrc.org/call2recycle/dropoff/index.php, and it will show you a list of all places that are supposed to recycle batteries. The Home Depot that doesn't recycle is listed here, so these places might not recycle batteries. You should probably call the place before you make a trip there to make sure that they recycle.
Using rechargable batteries instead of regular batteries is a great way to reduce waste. But when the batteries die, it's very important to recycle them. http://www.ehso.com/ehshome/batteries.php is a pretty good page that lists all of the problems associated with rechargable batteries in the trash and some statistics. According to the page, 88 percent of mercury in the waste stream is from batteries.
Has anyone else taken batteries to be recycled at stores that are supposed to recycle, only to find out that the store doesn't recycle?
Sunday, February 24, 2008
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