Home & Garden Best Posts in Thread: Alkaline Battery Recycling

Actually for most of the world, alkaline batteries are considered sanitary landfill (normal garbage) for incidental disposal of AA and AAA cells. But if you collected a large bulk package of spent cells, that becomes a different matter because it no longer becomes normal household waste. In California I believe things are different than rest-of-world. There, they take into account the slight amount of mercury in alkaline cells and consider it to be “toxic” waste and I am not sure what compulsory measures they need to take. I would consider a small quantity of alkaline cells here to be sanitary landfill, just like in the States excepting California. Many people do not understand lithium requirements including me because the governments cannot make the required distinction between toxic waste (poison, like cadmium, lead, Mercury) and hazardous waste (explosive, like lithium). I would guess CA law makes no distinction. Why? I don’t know. But lithium will not pollute the environment no matter what CA thinks. Lithium is a base element like sodium, calcium and potassium BUT like sodium has a tendency to explode under certain conditions. It will not explode on the way to the sanitary landfill. So I typically throw them away (sanitary landfill) on the basis of about one laptop battery every 3 years.


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