Published: 29/07/2009

Homes in the UK throw away an astonishing 600m household batteries every year, which is the equivalent weight of 110 jumbo jets.
Isle of Wight Council is helping to reduce that figure by installing ‘battery bins’ at its three household recycling centres at Lynnbottom (outskirts Newport), Forest Road (Newport) and Afton (Freshwater). Visitors put their disused batteries in these collection bins, which are then sent away for recycling.
It's not just your typical type of household battery that can be recycled, such as AA's and AAA's. The bins can also take small amounts of disused laptop batteries, hearing aid batteries and mobile phone batteries.
The disused batteries are collected by a specialist recycling firm. The batteries are stripped down and drained to leave just their metal casing which is then melted or dissolved.
The metal that's produced can then be recycled into a variety of items which could be anything from more batteries to frying pans to DVD players.
Isle of Wight Council Cabinet member for the Environment and Transport Edward Giles said "The council actively encourages feedback from residents and one area that did often come up when talking about waste was what to do with old batteries.
"People do care about the environment and these new battery recycling bins are another tool to help divert waste from landfill".

The batteries are collected by waste battery service G & P Batteries through a scheme by Valpak. Car batteries are also collected at the civic amenity sites but this is separate to the household battery bin. More information can be obtained by calling (01983) 821000 or online at www.iwight.com/waste