For Recycling
I have this jar at home. It was an old jar that used to contain choco flakes from Baguio, which I repurposed as a container for old, spent batteries, and I labeled it with black cloth tape and marked with correction fluid.
After a couple of months of collecting AA and AAA alkaline batteries, I was quite surprised to see how many batteries our house actually consumed! All the old batteries from clocks, remote controls, flashlights, you name it, goes straight into the jar.
Yesterday, with the jar being about 4/5 full, I decided to bring the jar with me to the mall. In SM Megamall, and most other SM malls as far as I know, they have a Nokia-sponsored box where you can drop your old cellphones, chargers, and batteries in. After that, the contents are sent to the proper disposal channels.
Nokia: We Recycle
On the downside, my research has led me to fact that, while alkaline batteries still contain small amounts of mercury despite the ban of its use in household batteries, it is uncertain whether certain “recycling centers” actually segregate alkaline batteries for recovery of its precious metals, or if they just throw it out in landfills anyway, which sort of defeats the purpose of my dropping off of batteries. Dropping old lithium-ion batteries in would be better, since they have higher recyclable content. But since the lifespan of laptop batteries usually last at least 1 year, there may not be much of those lying around your house.
With any luck, Nokia would be true their tagline, “Drop your old phone, battery or charger here for recycling and we’ll take care of the rest.” If you need to find the dropbox, head on over to the ground floor of Podium or beside the information counter in CyberZone SM Megamall.
If you found this information useful, buy me a coffee.
