Why Recycle Your Batteries? Recycling batteries provides businesses and other organizations with an important tool for reducing their environmental impact. From a macroeconomic standpoint, battery recycling may be beneficial to business and industry as a whole because the materials reclaimed from them can help keep the cost of these materials down. Buyers of wholesale industrial batteries and other batteries should look into battery recycling, as it can help them become better corporate citizens. Telecom Electric Supply Company provides wholesale batteries to a variety of businesses and organizations for various uses. These batteries provide convenient power and can also be easily recycled, reducing TES clients’ environmental impact. Why Battery Recycling Batteries are made of a variety of materials, some of which can be quite valuable, such as lithium and other rare earth metals. Some of the materials used to make batteries can pose an environmental hazard if placed in a landfill or other waste facility, such as soil or groundwater contamination. Unfortunately, only about 10 to 12 percent of the 70 million pounds of batteries sold annually in the U.S. are recycled, according to Call2Reycle, a major battery recycler in North America. Companies that purchase wholesale batteries are ideal partners in battery recycling programs because of the large number of batteries they purchase. While getting individual consumers to recycle batteries may be very challenging, convincing companies to institute battery recycling programs may be an easier sell and yield more batteries. Recycling batteries lets manufacturers of batteries reuse these materials to create new batteries. Because they’re using recycled materials, manufacturers’ costs are lower, allowing them to sell batteries at a lower cost. Materials reclaimed from battery recycling can also be used in a variety of other pursuits. For example, zinc recovered from recycled batteries is useful in sunscreen. Battery recycling can greatly benefit the environment. Batteries use metals like mercury, lead, zinc, and lithium, which can be dangerous in landfills or if they are improperly disposed of by users. By recycling batteries, users keep harmful materials away from the water table and environment. In addition to reclaiming potentially harmful metals, recycling batteries also helps to protect the environment from chemicals, such as sulfuric acid, which are highly corrosive and can cause considerable damage to soil, water, and air. How Recycling Works How batteries are recycled depends on their make-up. Zinc and alkali batteries are typically recycled in a mechanical separation process that divides the batteries into zinc
and manganese concentrate, steel, paper, and plastic. In most cases, all components of these batteries are recycled. Recycling lithium ion batteries is more involved and involves a smelting process. Battery recycling provides a means for companies that purchase wholesale batteries in bulk to improve their environmental image, an important public relations priority in the current climate of environmental awareness. Keeping battery costs low by making recycled components more readily available to manufacturers also adds incentive to recycling.