Recycling Batteries: Create a deposit like pop bottles

[August1991]

I heard a news report based on this recent Environment Canada study about batteries.

Most Canadians cannot imagine life without cellphones, MP3 players, laptop computers and digital cameras. But many of us do not realize the toxic toll our high-tech lifestyles are taking on the environment.

Many of the batteries that power these gadgets contain hazardous substances, such as lead, nickel, cadmium and mercury. Yet with battery recycling rates in Canada at barely 2 per cent, many of these toxins end up in landfills, where they can leach out and pollute our drinking water.

The problem will grow larger as we buy more and more electronic products. A study released last week by Environment Canada predicts the number of batteries that Canadians discard will jump to more than 494 million by 2010 from approximately 348 million in 2004.

Toronto Star

At present, we depend on voluntary schemes to recuperate batteries. In Montreal, people can take used batteries to fire stations for proper disposal. Not surprisingly, about 2% of batteries across Canada are disposed of this way. Most just get tossed into the general garbage.

Now, it has been suggested that the government pass legislation that would force battery manufacturers to take back used batteries. They could also be liable for batteries even after having sold them. It has also been suggested that users be held responsible for disposing of batteries - subject to fines.

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There is a simple solution to this problem. We use it now for car and marine batteries and for pop cans and pop bottles. All new batteries sold should include a deposit of, say, fifty cents. When the battery is returned to a depot, the deposit is refunded. If necessary, batteries could have a label indicating this.

[stignasty]

There is a simple solution to this problem. We use it now for car and marine batteries and for pop cans and pop bottles. All new batteries sold should include a deposit of, say, fifty cents. When the battery is returned to a depot, the deposit is refunded. If necessary, batteries could have a label indicating this.

That is a really good idea.

[geoffrey]

Agreed, it's a great idea. We'll likely have to move to something similar for CFL's once they are mandatory.

[stignasty]

The logistics might be a bit hard to work out though. If we were to do this on a nationwide basis, we would have to be able to identify only the batteries sold in Canada and that deposit was paid on. I don't know what percentage of the batteries we use are actually manufactured here, and labeling may become a problem. It would be even harder if only some of the provinces went to this kind of a program.

[Wilber]

Easy to identify, they are the ones with labeling in French and English.

[August1991]

Easy to identify, they are the ones with labeling in French and English.

Never thought of that but there are regulations for labels.

It sems to me that pop bottle and car battery deposits are viewed as an indirect tax under provincial jurisdiction. (I suspect we have imitated the American convention.) Each province does this differently. (In Quebec, there is a $25 deposit on car tires.)

Maybe this would require provincial legislation, not federal.

The logistics might be a bit hard to work out though. If we were to do this on a nationwide basis, we would have to be able to identify only the batteries sold in Canada and that deposit was paid on. I don't know what percentage of the batteries we use are actually manufactured here, and labeling may become a problem. It would be even harder if only some of the provinces went to this kind of a program.

It's not where they're manufactured. We simply want people to dispose of batteries safely. The deposit amounts to a bond or guarantee of good behaviour.

The danger, as you note, is people "importing" dead batteries into Canada to collect the "reward". Wilber has a good point about this. Batteries sold in the Canadian market are already identified. But if this were a provincial issue, then it would take federal coordination.

The federal environment department does not view non-rechargeable batteries as toxic. Nevertheless, a biologist once explained to me that a single AA alkaline battery polluted one cubic foot of earth for a century. I dunno.

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There's another angle to this suggestion. Everyone living in a large city has seen people rummaging through garbage bins for empty pop bottles and cans. Grocery stores now install machines that verify, count

and then give out refunds.

Pop bottle deposits amount to a direct transfer from lazy people to poor people who want to scavenge - people who live outside "the system". If batteries had a deposit, dead batteries would become a valuable tax-free commodity.