EU Proposing Mandatory Battery Recycling

Ironsides writes "The BBC Reports that the European Union is working on a directive to mandate battery recycling. Among other things, it will ban more than trace amounts of cadmium and mercury and require all batteries to be removeable. If it passes, it will be interesting to see how this affects such devices as MP3 players that generally do not have removeable rechargeable batteries."

Comments

Very brave

[MightyYar]

How very bold of the politicians to remove mercury from batteries now that the packaging on most batteries advertises "Mercury Free!". And getting rid of cadmium is a risky political move now that every device worth it's salt uses Lithium-Ion technology! Bold, bold moves from truly noble men and women.

Re:Very brave

[jmv]

It's may not be bold, but at least it's realistic. The industry has shown they can do without Mercury and Cadmium, now they'll have to remove them from everything. It would be useless to say "no oil in cars anymore" if there isn't a real (practical, proven) alternative. However, once (e.g.) half the cars are conferted to cleaner stuff, they *could* do such a thing (not saying they will).

Convenience

[Tablizer]

If there was a convenient way to dispose of "technological waste" such as batteries and computers, then most would not mind.

However, if you have to call around to chase a moving target to turn risky garbage in, most will just dump it in the regular garbage.

The trash pickup company could have a policy whereby tech waste is put in say blue bags by the side of the curb with the rest of the trash one day of the month. A small tax on semi-hazardous tech devices could pay for it. Or perhaps regular bags with a pre-determined message/sign taped to it.

Non-removable batteries

[caller9]

MP3 players will get thrown away by their owners with the battery still inside, it's not like they're going to pay the trash man to open every bag, open the device, and then write up a report to start an investigation on who dumped it. Unless they serialize the batteries and have expensive procedures to track manufacturers that have a low occurance of recycling...hope I don't give them ideas. I'm sure an expensive public information campaign is also in the works with television shots of dead babies covered in batteries.

Future models will likely have a cell-phone like removable battery with a slide/screw off case. Several people will comply to save the babies.

My question: What are they going to do about computer CMOS batteries, and other really embedded batteries. Why stop there, we need to put an end to the electrolyte seepage from large capacitors.

Who uses NiCad anymore anyway? NiMH is all I've seen for some time. Though I'm not a battery expert, I assume NiCad is still used in cheaper devices. The "memory" on those batteries was always horrible, charge it once before it was almost completely dead and that's the new lifetime unless you work to rebuild its capacity.

Chalk this one up to expensive and ineffective legislation to make a news story and do little else.

Re:Interesting? I think not

[woolio]

if you want the battery industry to change, refuse to purchase devices that are non-recyclable! ... the industry adapts to deliver what we want,

That only changes the problem, without solving it.

Just because "X" buys only recycled paper doesn't me he is going to put the discarded stuff back in the recycling bin.

The public wants recycled goods, but it also doesn't want to be bothered with actually recycling them...

Re:Unintended consequences

[evilviper]

After this, people will chuck their cell phones into the nearest river, even more directly polluting the environment they tried to protect.

Now WHY would someone do that? Out of spite for the new law? No, I think not.

This requires shops to collect used batteries at NO COST, so I can't see any reason someone would do something as insane as going out of their way to toss it into a river.