Also, "take it somewhere" isn't that bad when "somewhere" is home depot, which has a battery disposal bin.
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.
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.
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.
Just have some hardware stores keep a bucket labeled “recycle your batteries here” and the recycler can make monthly visits.
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.
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.
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.