Battery Recycling

Battery Recycling

The Village Hall at 200 North River Street and the Police Department at 10 Civic Center Avenue serve as drop-off locations for all types of used rechargeable batteries, button, camera and cell phone batteries and other types of household batteries, including wheelchair batteries. Vehicle batteries and alkaline batteries will not be accepted. These used batteries are delivered periodically to an appropriate hazardous waste recycling site.

This program will allow for the safe recycling of batteries to help keep potentially hazardous materials out of local landfills. Batteries may be dropped off at the Village Hall and the Police Department during normal business hours, Monday to Friday from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm., except on holidays.

Why Don't we Recycle Alkaline Batteries?

In this age of recycling, sometimes we need to adjust how we do things. One example is alkaline batteries, which have not contained mercury for at least 20 years now. The newest recycling guidelines say that you can now safely throw alkaline batteries away with your weekly trash since they contain no hazardous materials. Although they may contain a small amount of metal such as nickel or zinc, they contain no hazardous materials and there is no cost-effective way to recycle them, so the Village of Montgomery is no longer accepting them for recycling.

All other types of batteries, such as rechargeable batteries, button batteries and lead acid batteries should be recycled and the Village of Montgomery will continue to accept those. A word of caution--You should throw out alkaline batteries when they are no longer working and not stockpile them to dispose of them all at once. In higher concentrations they could cause problems at the landfill. It's better to have a couple batteries in your trash than a large container of them all at once.

Is There an Alternative?

The best advice is: If you don't like the idea of throwing away alkaline batteries, don't buy them and stop generating the waste. Instead, buy rechargeable batteries and commit to using them. They are more expensive than one-use batteries, but pay for themselves over time as they can last for many years.

Conservationists emphasize that as a society, we've got to stop buying one-use things and alkaline batteries are a prime example of that.