Rechargeable Batteries
Rechargeable Batteries
WHY?
In UK more than 600 million batteries are thrown away every year. This amount is equivalent to 22,000 tonnes or 110 jumbo jets.
It is really important to divert batteries from landfill because they contain heavy metals that can be harmful for the environment as well as the living organisms. Some of the most common heavy metals found in batteries are:
Mercury: toxic metal, especially dangerous to the developing nervous system
Cadmium: carcinogenic
Lead: damaging for the central nervous system and for blood circulation
These heavy metals may leak into the ground when the battery casing corrodes. This can contribute to soil and water pollution and endanger wildlife. Cadmium, for example, can be toxic to aquatic invertebrates and can bio-accumulate in fish, which damages ecosystems and makes them unfit for human consumption
Using rechargeable batteries is the easiest way to reduce the amount of disposable batteries ending up in landfill sites. The initial cost of buying rechargeable batteries is higher but is paid back multiple times as the batteries are being used again and again.
Frequently Asked Questions (4)
Crayford materials recycling facility utilises optical sortation equipment that uses NIR (Nir-Infra Red technology) to sort plastic by polymer type, which are then ejected from the mixed plastic stream. These are typically sorted into HDPE and PET bottle fractions. The remaining mixed plastic fractions are then sent for onward recycling and reprocessing. Dedicated plastic reprocessing facilities will have further optical sortation equipment to achieve full polymer sort of all plastic grades, this equipment can sort down to particles of only a few millimetres in diameter.
Those items cannot be accepted at present. As pointed out these comprise of metal and plastic that cannot easily be separated at a materials recycling facility. Viridor is constantly looking to expand the list of recyclable materials that can be accepted at its facilities so as technology develops, those and other type of materials may be accepted for recycling.
Plastic film such as supermarket carrier bags and LDPE sacks from commingled collection rounds are removed at the front end of the process. The Crayford facility utilises bag splitters, that have a rotating ripping drum that splits the bags and empties the contents. The film is then removed manually from the remainder of the recyclable stream.
No cleaning is completed at Crayford of the recyclable commodities. Crayford is the first stage of the reprocessing process, sorting the recyclable materials into individual grades. Materials are then baled and sent to dedicated reprocessors per material stream. These reprocessing facilities will often employ washing and drying facilities into their processes to de-label and remove contamination of products.
Last updated: Thu 26th April, 2012 @ 11:10
