Every year, over 2 billion used batteries are disposed into solid waste facilities in the United States. Batteries are one of the most widely used products by people. Its ability to produce electrical energy and its portability makes it so useful to be used in our everyday appliances. The demand for batteries will greatly increase because of the increasing amounts of applications that need these batteries.
If you think about the quantity of battery powered applications around your, it is quite obvious about the amount of batteries are produced and disposed of every year. The disposal of these batteries is overly increasing and should be stopped and should be recycled because batteries provide numerous hazardous elements that will pollute and poison our environment.
The environmental issues tied to the disposal of batteries are quite great as most batteries consist of multiple heavy and hazardous metals as well as acids. These metals and have the ability to cause immense damage and harm to our environment. Without taking the right precaution in disposing of these materials, the metal and acid have that potential to leak into the ground when the battery casing is in the process of corrosion.
Common batteries consist of harmful substances like lead, cadmium, and mercury. Lead is most likely to be used in lead acid batteries used in car batteries. Cadmium is an element that is used in NiCad batteries. These NiCad batteries are used for cordless power tools, personal stereos, portable telephones, lap-top computers, shavers, motorized toys etc, with a life of 4-5 years. Mercury is a leading material that is used in button batteries. Button batteries are small batteries used in watches and other small devices.
These harmful substances create a great deal of harm to the environment unlike the ones used in a typical alkaline battery. A typical alkaline battery consists of a zinc electrode, a manganese cathode and a potassium electrolyte. All three of these elements consist of a harmful aspect to both our environment and us. For example, manganese has the potential to provide toxicity to our health and the environment when burned.
As the some countries do not have the acceptable recycling plants to process those batteries, so they are burned. The fumes that are released into the environment affects the ecosystem that is within it vicinity. Ecosystems do not only include animals and the invertebrates that live within the region but also humans. Humans play a major role in the ecosystem as the predator. Whatever is consisted in our preys' stomach will be embedded into ours.
Recycling Batteries can also provide an economic advantage to battery producers. This is because when the batteries are recycled, there are some elements that can be reused as secondary raw materials. For example, the zinc in alkaline batteries can be reused again. The process can include smelting the element again or applying thermal-metallurgical processes to retrieve the metal content.
The advantage of this is that you are able to properly process the scrap batteries to recover metal from battery active materials without a poking hole in your pocket. With this recycling, you are able to save money and at the same time to be able to reduce that risk of damaging our environment. In the Philippines, It is estimated that 75% of lead supply of about 40,000 metric tons in 2002 came from recycling
