Household Battery Recycling

November/December 1992

While stiff environmental regulations, general misconceptions, and limited technology are hindering progress, household battery recycling could be picking up energy.

BY NANCY L. GAST

Nancy L. Gast is editorial associate of Scrap Processing and Recycling.

How can such a small item stump the recycling industry?

Batteries are a staple in every household—in fact, it's estimated that each American uses around 16 household batteries annually.  The problem is, all those batteries eventually die, and recycling solutions are few and far between. Unlike lead-acid batteries—more than 95 percent of which are currently being recycled—household batteries have generally been relegated to landfills rather than recycling plants.

The result? While household batteries make up about 0.09 percent by weight of the U.S. waste stream, they reportedly account for more than half of the cadmium and mercury found in America 's waste. This, if for no other reason, has launched a movement calling for answers to the household battery recycling dilemma. But batteries, as household convenience products, can be downright inconvenient when it comes to recycling. As Norm England, president of the Portable Rechargeable Battery Association (PRBA) (Atlanta), puts it, "We're still in the crawling stage."

Starting From Scratch

Of the many types of household batteries, recyclers generally focus on the ones considered most reclaimable: mercuric-oxide and sealed nickel-cadmium batteries. Those containing mercury—including alkaline, carbon-zinc, and button cells—are generally used in consumer appliances, hearing aids, calculators, and watches. Nickel-cadmium cells (commonly called NiCds) are rechargeable, and power consumer electronics as well as appliances.

Operations that recover cadmium and mercury from household batteries do exist, particularly in France, Switzerland, Japan, and Korea  where several firms are completing the recycling circle for NiCds by recovering pure-enough cadmium for making new NiCd batteries. In the United States, on the other hand, collection difficulties and low profitability have kept the practice from being widely adopted. In fact, the NiCd recycling market belongs to just two companies: INMETCO (Ellwood City, Pa.) and Horsehead Resource Development Co. (Palmerton, Pa.), which work together to recover metal from NiCd cells.

At INMETCO, spent NiCds are shredded, then sent to a rotary furnace where cadmium, zinc, and lead are "driven off as a dust," says Horsehead's James Saville, vice president of sales and marketing. The remaining product, the INMETCO "pig"—an alloy that's 8-percent nickel, 13-percent chrome, and 79-percent iron—can be reused in a number of stainless steel applications, including automobile components, medical equipment, and household appliances. Meanwhile, Horsehead recovers cadmium, lead, and zinc from INMETCO's furnace dust and send its output to other domestic companies for final purification. Finally, the refined cadmium, lead, and zinc are consumed in a variety of new products, including galvanized steel and ointments. (Yes, what may be soothing your baby's diaper rash could have once powered your radio.)

According to Mark Schweers, marketing and sales manager for INMETCO, the company's relative dominance in the NiCd recovery market is due to its patented high-temperature metals recovery system. Other companies have not followed INMETCO's lead because of such obstacles as the question of hazardousness and the problems in transporting relatively small quantities of materials across the country, he says.

On the mercury battery recycling front, Mercury Refining Co. (Albany, N.Y.) recovers metal from a variety of mercury-containing products, including button cells and silver-oxide batteries, using a pyrometallurgical process. As well, a number of West Coast operations claim to recycle a number of metals from mercuric-oxide button batteries, but how much recycling is actually taking place, counters David Hurd, recycling operations specialist of Bronx 2000 (Bronx, N.Y.), is debatable.

The Hard Cell

While many are applauding these companies' efforts, the batteries they reclaim make up less than 15 percent of total U.S. sales of domestically produced household batteries, Hurd reports. And, since actual recycling of batteries and/or their materials is so limited in the United States at this time, the real attention seems to be focused on making batteries more environmentally friendly and keeping them from being disposed improperly.

Indeed, a number of battery manufacturers are opting to solve potential disposal concerns before they arise. Eveready (Westlake, Ohio), Duracell International Inc. (Bethel, Conn.) and Eastman Kodak Co. (Rochester, N.Y.) have each developed standard alkaline batteries that are virtually mercury-free. (No mercury is added during production of these new batteries, but trace levels are still present since the element is found naturally in the environment.) The manufacturers say that the performance levels of the new cells are equivalent—if not superior—to their mercury-heavy predecessors.

While the new reduced-mercury batteries are expected to significantly decrease the amount of mercury in the waste stream, increased use of NiCds is ultimately expected to increase the battery contribution of cadmium in the waste stream from about half to more than two-thirds—a Catch-22, as far as battery manufacturers and potential recyclers are concerned.

Substitutes for cadmium are in development, but they are not expected to hit the marketplace for some time. Until then, manufacturers of NiCds point out that these cells already are paving the way toward "greener" batteries since they can be used over and over again. While they are more expensive than one-time-use batteries (such as alkaline), their energy cost is said to be comparable since they can be recharged repeatedly. Still, they don't last forever, and the question remains: What can be done with them after they're spent? For now, in the United States, the answer lies solely with INMETCO and Horsehead.

But even if there were more domestic recyclers, NiCd battery reclamation faces another obstacle: What do you do when your hand-held vacuum cleaner has sucked up its last dustball? There's a NiCd in it just waiting to be recycled—but wait! You can't get it out. It's built into the appliance.

"Unless you use a sledgehammer, you can't remove NiCd batteries from certain appliances for recycling," England says. But that will change in many states by July 1993, when products manufactured on or after that date will be required to be designed for easy removal of their batteries—no sledgehammer necessary. As well, the literature that accompanies those products will have to include a notice that the product contains rechargeable batteries.

Black & Decker Corp. (Towson, Md.) is getting a head start in supporting the proper collection and recycling of NiCds, as well as small sealed lead batteries. The manufacturer of a variety of cordless appliances that contain NiCds, Black & Decker offers its customers the opportunity to either purchase new rechargeable batteries for their appliances, or else leave the product at the service center to ensure proper disposition of its spent battery. According to the company, either of these actions will guarantee that the batteries will be collected and recycled properly. In addition, Black & Decker—one of PRBA's first member companies—is working on redesigning its cordless tools and appliances to facilitate battery removal in time for next year's deadline, while also planning to label batteries by electrode type for easy sorting.

Bin or Buyback?

Collecting batteries for recycling on the community level seems to be as limited as it is on the manufacturer level. Probably less than 20 communities in the United Stateshave battery collection programs—and most of those are actually collecting the cells for proper disposal—but that doesn't worry Norm England. "Ten years ago, few communities had household recycling collection programs," he points out. And if the growth of PRBA is any indication— England says new members "come in two, three a week"—he feels that the outlook for mainstream battery recycling is definitely favorable.

Until it is, however, PRBA keeps busy by representing the interests of manufacturers, distributors, assemblers, users, suppliers, and sellers of small sealed rechargeable batteries and battery-operated products. Its goal: to keep spent energy cells out of America 's landfills by reclaiming and recycling them.

One proposed means to this end is having grocers and other battery retail outlets take back spent household batteries, but it's not a popular one with retailers. "Grocers are already having to accept glass and aluminum containers because of deposits," England says, adding that the costs involved in establishing reclamation sites also presents hurdles to this idea.

Still, dropoff locations for spent household batteries do exist, though, again, they typically collect the batteries for disposal. The University of Minnesota (Minneapolis), for one, put a battery collection program into place back in 1989. By 1990, the program was "going full-force," according to Dana Donatucci, director of the university's recycling program. Departmental offices have small plastic pails that are used as collection containers, which are later rounded up by the university's chemical waste program. After separation by battery type, most are sent to appropriate landfill spots—and kept from being incinerated along with the rest of the university's waste.

Gene Christiansen, a chemical waste manager with the program, says that while current costs are prohibitive for actually recycling the cells, the university is hanging onto "a lot" of lithium, silver, and NiCd batteries in hopes of reclaiming them someday soon.

But even collection programs are met with some trepidation. Getting a Charge Out of the Waste Stream, a multi-state feasibility study conducted by Hurd that was largely funded by the New York State Department of Economic Development, notes that the battery manufacturing industry, as represented by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (Washington, D.C.), advises against consumer battery collections. The association maintains that collection may increase the incidence of battery ingestion by children and senior citizens who have been known to mistake button batteries for pills and swallow them.

What's the Charge?

What can be done until the recycling of household batteries is as commonplace as it is for glass, aluminum, and paper? Collection programs are one possibility, since they prevent batteries from being incinerated. And then there are landfills—an option that John Laing of Burson-Marsteller (Chicago), a public relations firm that works with Duracell, stresses is not an unsafe one.

Laing says that Duracell supports recycling and is actively working to make its products more environmentally friendly. In fact, he stresses, the company's new mercury-free alkaline battery lasts even longer than its predecessor, and the company has begun packaging these batteries in recycled paperboard and plastic. Nevertheless, with reclamation techniques often prohibitively expensive and recycling programs still in their infancy, Laing is concentrating on dispelling some common misconceptions about mercury batteries.

"In general, it's not easy for people to take a substance like mercury and imagine it not being 'dangerous,'" Laing says. "But a battery's a sealed package—the mercury isn't about to come out of it. Even if you sawed a battery in half, the mercury wouldn't be a problem unless you ingested it." Misunderstandings abound about NiCds as well, says England , and that hasn't helped in getting the idea of household battery recycling widely accepted by either the government or the general public. "When a NiCd battery is produced, it's not toxic. When it's shipped to an appliance manufacturer, put into a cordless screwdriver, or shipped to a hardware store, it's not toxic. When you use it, it's not toxic. But when the battery is spent, according to rules by the Environmental Protection Agency, which require that wastes by tested for toxicity characteristics, the battery suddenly becomes toxic."

Only after being ground finely enough to fit through a 30-millimeter sieve, thus exposing the cadmium, does the battery become toxic, England says. "Using that method," he continues, "when you test for toxicity, there's enough cadmium there to deem it toxic. We feel that that's not really a valid way to do it, because the integrity of the battery cell is great enough that it contains the toxicity within its case, and therefore is really no danger to the consumer."  

This is stifling the movement toward achieving mainstream household battery recycling, he believes. "We're trying to implement recycling programs while being shackled and handcuffed."

Looking for Energy

Household battery recycling is still in its infancy, and riddled with controversy. However, for the most part, it's blessed with the good intentions of many manufacturers, recyclers, and the public alike. Municipalities and institutions with collection programs keep popping up, and a number of states have already enacted legislation regarding battery labeling to aid in recycling (see sidebar on page XX).

England hopes that PRBA will spur a nationwide movement toward the cause, noting that although individual state rulings have helped battery recycling and reclamation, he'd like to see nationwide regulations instead of a "hodgepodge" of different laws for different states. Then words we'd all like to see on those boxes that hold our new toys could soon apply to the recycling industry as well: Batteries Included.

The State of the States

Several states have recently enacted legislation requiring that by July 1, 1993, rechargeable batteries be labeled as to chemical content and by manufacturer, and that the batteries be easily removable from all products. By May of this year, a number of states had already put such laws into effect. Here's a listing from the summer 1992 issue of The Recharger, PRBA's newsletter, of information that must be included on battery labels and the states that have passed the measures.

• Name of manufacturer: Minnesota and New Hampshire
• Recharging instructions: Minnesota
• The chasing-arrow recycling symbol: Arizona and Idaho (for batteries containing lead); Oregon, Vermont, and Iowa (for batteries containing lead or cadmium)
• "Dispose of properly" message: Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, and New Hampshire
• Electrode chemistry information: Connecticut, Minnesota, Maine, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and New Hampshire  —N.L.G.