Why do we have to bring batteries to a specific place to recycle them instead of just being able to throw them out/recycle them at home?
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Most other common recyclables – plastic, cardboard, bottles, cans, paper – are consumed frequently enough that it makes sense to dedicate a weekly truck pickup in many neighborhoods. But not many homes go through a recycling container’s worth of batteries over the course of a year, let alone in a week or two. And other than large batteries like for a car, batteries are small and light. It’s not a big deal to toss used batteries in a small box and then take them to a recycling point once or twice a year (or even less frequently). But it would be a big deal to either dedicate a vehicle weekly or twice a month just to pick up a small number of batteries, and batteries should not be thrown into a mixed pile of recyclables because of how those piles are sorted (magnets are used to pull metal out of the pile – adding batteries to the mix would require at least a few labor intensive extra steps in the separation process and any batteries that snuck by would present a hazard to the metal reclaiming process. Basically, while it’s a good idea to recycle batteries, it’s not worth trying to separate them or trying to regularly collect them separately.
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