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Comment by ta988 | Hacker News Reader

This is more common than most think, and this will get worse as more and more lithium batteries are making it to the garbage.

This one https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lake_Landfill is near radioactive material that were illegally dumped.

This is why we need a more focused and funded EPA.

Neighborhoods are built on highly contaminated areas hoping nobody will notice. There are so many disasters just waiting to happening or happening silently.

We need ways for citizens to own and access tools for analysis. So they can get more focused analysis by certified organizations.

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Is there any evidence this was battery-caused? Over 35 acres..?

Seems like their explanation (high heats melting plastic pipes and degrading the landfills' ability to pump out gases, leading to runaway anaerobic decomposition) is sufficient to explain what happened here?

> Is there any evidence...?

My bet - "No Evidence Whatever". But most people don't know what happens if you build a big pile of oily rags. Let alone about the fire hazard created if you pile up green hay.

True, but landfill operators do. I think the unspoken subtext in the article is that this was an abnormally hot period (possibly climate driven) that the old landfills just weren't designed for.

Kinda like the Fukushima sea walls (which were there, just not high enough).

I've heard about oily rags, but not about green hay - what happens?

https://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/29977...

I didn't meant this one was caused by batteries just that it increases the risk of fire.

Sure...

It's an interesting possibility! Does it happen with any regularity?

It’s sad that we (barely) care more about recycling soda cans than we do batteries. If throwing batteries in the regular trash is such a costly thing why on Earth don’t we collect a deposit and offer deposit return to anyone who turns them in?

In Oz there are retailers who provide battery recycling services... https://au.news.yahoo.com/bunnings-ikea-aldi-recycling-old-h...

I've got an even better question:

Given how ubiquitous and common battery usage is, why on earth is it SO DIFFICULT TO RECYCLE THEM?

My garbage is collected once a week, green waste too, recycling every other week, but regular use stuff like batteries is NEVER picked up I have to take it somewhere.

I'm sorry but if we actually cared about preventing these things from making it into landfills, we'd make it as easy as possible for people to recycle them.

I can't see battery pickup working except as a once per year kind of thing. And around me, there is a once per year electronics recycling pickup in my neighborhood.

Also, "take it somewhere" isn't that bad when "somewhere" is home depot, which has a battery disposal bin.

I would toss it in the trash. I don't want to go to Home Depot. Lol

There are only two ways to prevent this:

1. The waste management system should put everything on a big conveyor belt and filter out toxic/dangerous waste so that the consumer doesn't have to care about special handling.

2. Those materials should be outlawed from being used in consumer tech.

> I can't see battery pickup working except as a once per year kind of thing.

Why not?

> Also, "take it somewhere" isn't that bad when "somewhere" is home depot, which has a battery disposal bin.

I think you underestimate how lazy people are. Lets not leave the health and safety of our landfills up to something as risky as human laziness.

Agreed.

If we're serious about this, mandatory bi-yearly pickup of hazardous material (batteries, paint, solvents, etc), with awareness campaigns seems reasonable.

Push it down as a requirement on garbage companies and then monitor it through them.

> Why not?

Because weekly pickup is expensive to run.

In most places you pay for your weekly pickup one way or another. There’s no way people are going to vote for or approve an additional weekly pickup charge for something they dispose of very infrequently.

There are many stores with battery drop offs. If you really want to make a dent, put the battery recycling drop offs in grocery stores and put signage around it.

Routine pickup would be more hassle: You’d need to figure out the bins, the pickup method, the scheduling, etc. It’s really terrible for anything that isn’t both large and steady, like your waste bin.

Many places already have weekly/biweekly pickup for single-stream glass/plastic/paper/aluminum recycling - is there any fundamental reason that batteries couldn't be added to the stream?

They leak nasty stuff. Every worker would need to be wearing more protective clothing and respirators.

Why are employees touching leaking batteries?

Just have some hardware stores keep a bucket labeled “recycle your batteries here” and the recycler can make monthly visits.

We're talking about curbside pickup. There's men who lift the buckets and put them in trucks. Then humans help sort them at facilities. The worst thing about recycling now is mostly leftover organics and sharp lids.

How many batteries do you dispose of in a week? In a month? In a year?

I have a lot of battery powered devices, but it would take me a year to fill even a grocery bag with discarded batteries (with the exception of the occasional car or UPS battery swap every couple of years). But I generally use rechargeable batteries.

In Germany regular grocery stores are in walking distance (if your living rural, you might strongly prefer a bicycle, though), and last I looked, the mandatory post-checkout secondary-packaging-disposal/-recycling station includes a battery bin. Though it might only be required if they also sell batteries, which they (so far) still do.

Yes it is just that the US is extremely late to any good sense like that.

Keep in mind that home depot only accepts RECHARGEABLE cells, not your standard alkaline cells that accounts for most of people's disposal needs

Because alkaline batteries are (AFAIK) safe to throw away.

But they should be recycled.

My home depot sells alkaline batteries.

Where I am in Europe, a lot of supermarkets have a bin that can take light bulbs, batteries and small electronics (no bigger than a toaster). I believe this is based on an EU regulation that the seller has to accept electronic goods for recycling at end of life.

I've tried that. One by one the stores near me stopped accepting batteries.

Even the municipal recycling center, where I sometimes take bags full of paper or plastic bottles, refuses to take batteries.

The local Batteries+Bulbs store is the only place left near me. For how long?

It should be FAR far easier to do.

best buy has a very liberal electronics recycling program. do you live near one?

As in they take most things even if you don't buy anything?

Weekly pickup is only appropriate for things that need to be picked up weekly.

Many retail stores accept lithium batteries for recycling. You might already be going to a store every few weeks or months that accepts them.

The waste/recycling service where I live advises that we can put old batteries in a ziploc baggie on top of our recycling bin, which is picked up weekly. The three bins we have (landfill, organics/compost, and recycling) are picked up via a truck with a grabber arm, so that the driver never has to leave the driver's seat.

The last time I left some out, I could swear I saw the driver just pick up the recycle bin with the baggie of batteries on top and dump it in with all the rest of the recycling (so why put the baggie on top?). For the 2-3 times a year I do this, it would only take about 30 seconds to hop out and grab the baggie by hand to store it separately. Maybe they sort it out at the recycling facility, but I've also been told that almost all our recycling ends up in the landfill anyway.

In some areas a non negligible part of recycling goes to incineration because incinerators can't work without enough fuel and cardboard, paper and plastics are necessary.

And in some other places any contaminated recycling (oil, food residues etc) is redirected to landfill/incinerators.

It's difficult to recycle batteries because it's difficult to recycle them. They're complicated chemical containers that can be volatile/contain a lot of energy. Some things are easier to recycle and some are harder. Batteries are pretty close to the bottom of the list.

(This is also why "electricity is more environmentally friendly than burning fuel" is not necessarily true).

It really makes me think about the increase in use of disposable vapes, the younger demographic that uses them, and how they are even labelled as “disposable” in the first place. I know people who go through one a day and once they are done, they just dispose of them in their garbage can as they think they can simply be disposed of. I think a reward system would be the only way to incentivize proper recycling of these sadly.

Yes some cities are littered with these. Around cannabis dispensaries where they are often given as gifts it is even worse.

> why on Earth don’t we collect a deposit and offer deposit return to anyone who turns them in?

that's exactly how it works in Germany. By law batteries must not go into household trash and retailers are required to take back used ones free of charge.

https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/waste-resources/pro...

We kind of do.

Almost any larger battery has a resale value and you could reuse instead of recycle.

Around my area in Metro Detroit there are battery stores all over that will buy used batteries. It might be only a dollar for some random laptop battery while car batteries etc are basically the core price of $50-$60 per.

At the very least, there is value in the raw metals as scrap.

> It’s sad that we (barely) care more about recycling soda cans than we do batteries

Why is that sad? It takes more energy to extract aluminum from bauxite with electrolysis than it does to recycle used aluminum. Same with steel. Depending on the source, 30-50% of aluminum and steel made in the US is from recycled stock.

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