Batteries: Do you recycle them PROPERLY?

Guilty!

Rechargeable!

I hoard dead batteries until the opportunity arises to send them to proper recycling with a dead computer or television or something.

Not sure how it works at other places - here in public buildings you can find big containers where you can drop them

I'm still careful with the rechargeable batteries!

They can possibly be overcharged and leak corrosive acid or just plain emit fumes over time as it is.

Rechargeable!!

Most of the time we recycle.

I drop off the recycling center.

very guilty of throwing them out.

I throw them away or else I get them mixed up with the rest of my batteries. There really isn't a place to recycle anything near my college apartment

No I should tho

I try to go with rechargeable, but I'm guilty of throwing them away.

I try not use them at all, but sometimes there is no choice: e.g. for smoke alarm. But yes I drop used ones into recycling box.

Throw in trash

I have a lot of rechargeable but most other batteries I toss in the trash.

I didn't know you're supposed to recycle them somewhere.. I'm guilty of throwing them away in regular trash. whoops.

I just toss them in the trash :X

We make sure to properly dispose of our batteries. Simply have a small container dedicated for your dead batteries. Once the container is full, just drop them off at any location which takes them, such as Best Buy.

Guilty of throwing them out with the regular trash!

I save all my batteries and take to them to the town waste area when they have posted safe disposal of them.

I throw mine in the trash.

I just throw them out, not even sure if I know how to dispose of them properly.

I'm lucky in that my schools usually have a battery recycling program, so I drop them off when I've got some to get rid of.

I switched to rechargeable awhile back, but have been guilty of not-recycling them. CFL bulbs too.

Common alkaline batteries, such as Duracell and Energizer AAs and AAAs (unless they're rechargeable) do not need to be recycled. They can be thrown in the trash. There is no harm in dropping them off for "recycling", but they are likely sorted out and discarded anyway, since recycling is unnecessary for them and expensive.

The batteries that need to be recycled are those with toxic metals in them, such as most rechargeable batteries and small watch or coin batteries. These include NiMH, Ni-Cad, lead-acid, Lithium-ion, mercury, and silver batteries. These can also be found embedded in rechargeable items such as laptops, cellphones, iPhones/iPads, electric toothbrushes, electric razors, and rechargeable vibrators. The reason for recycling is to prevent the toxic metals, such as nickel, lead, cadmium, silver, and mercury, from contaminating our soil and water.

Even if "recycled", the unfortunate truth is that they are rarely recycled. The batteries are passed/sold from company to company, or through contractors, until much of it ends up in third-world countries, such as China, where the environmental standards are lax and the batteries are just discarded anyway, and the profits pocketed (somewhere, someone charges for all that recycling, and makes a profit). In the short-term, the toxic metals are kept out of North American soil and water, but over the long-term, much of it ends up in our oceans and air anyway.

The same is true for the mercury in fluorescent tubes and the lead in electronic circuit boards (most things electronic that are more than a few years old have lead solder on the circuit boards--more recently, in the past decade or so, much of the lead solder is slowly being replaced by tin solder--but that's not always true for the lowest-cost, third-world-produced products, like sex toys, where much of the solder still contains lead).

(At least as of a few years ago, much of this was the case. I hope that, over time, more and more real recycling is taking place. But unless the whole system is audited all the way through to the final recycling location, likely in a third-world country where it is nearly impossible to verify or trust their word, it is difficult to know where your batteries end up).

But we should keep trying to do the right thing as much as we can, and hope the system improves.