Battery Crisis

As Batteries contain dangerous chemicals and valuable resource deposits, and we need to maximize this factor by recycling these batteries more often. Lead acid batteries from cars are one of the most recycled items in America. If this wasn’t the case, lead would slowly be coming out of landfills and polluting lots of land and water, and developing nations typically pay less attention to mounting environmental problems. This would lead to a lot of lead poisoning if the lead got into food or water. To make people recycle batteries (in general) more we could put deposits of 10-20 cents per battery. This would give people more of an incentive to return these batteries to a recycling center. People would get the deposits back after they gave the batteries to the recycling center. With the money that is earned from the batteries not being recycled we could make more recycling centers to bring batteries too. Recycling batteries saves energy in the long run, reduces pollution, reduces the need for a landfill, generates income and jobs, lessens the amount of regulations, and reduces imports. Laws have been passed to promote disposal, and 98% of all lead batteries are recycled. In North America only, one in six households recycles rechargeable batteries. Some steps that we can take to reduce or minimize the damage caused to the environment due to improper battery disposal includes the recycling of used batteries, using rechargeable batteries more, buying batteries containing less mercury, lead and cadmium, providing information to customers about recycling, using alternative energy storage in devices, and looking for renewable sources of energy. The metals in batteries such as, cadmium, nickel, and lead, are harmful to people and the environment. Some of the dangers include burns and danger to the eyes and skin, polluted ground water, and the vaporized form becoming trapped in the atmosphere and polluting lakes and streams through form of rain. Recycling saves the recovered plastics and metals can be used to make new batteries. It also keeps toxic metals out landfills. Additionally, a key step to disposing of any battery is reading the label. With all that being said, batteries contain dangerous chemicals and valuable resource deposits that we can really take advantage of for our own good.