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Comment by trollbridge | Hacker News Reader

A dedicated bin in front of my house for it? No.

I’m not really going to make a special trip to some place to recycle tiny little batteries - and most recycling is a scam anyway that either gets dumped in the regular rubbish or else gets shipped to a third world country.

For things that can be legitimately recycled I make sure to reuse them… cardboard is one thing that is legitimately recycled here with special places to drop it off that is worth the special trip.

For plastic trash, it isn’t recyclable and is one of the most irritating aspects of buying anything new: a mountain of unusable plastic. The same goes for takeout food.

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> most recycling is a scam anyway that either gets dumped in the regular rubbish or else gets shipped to a third world country

I've never seen this credibly claimed about battery recycling. Curbside plastic recycling sure, but my understanding is that at least lithium ion batteries legitimately have enough value to be worth the effort to really recycle for the companies who do it.

In my country every supermarket has a recycling box where you can drop batteries, light bulbs and old small electronics (think hair dryers or keyboards).

I believe this comes from an EU regulation that when electronics reach end-of-life you can give them back to the store that sold them.

I'd love to see the financials of this service, as I assume sometimes people dump things that are working they just don't need. I guess the store also pays the company something so they don't need to deal with recycling themselves. And I guess they just put everything in a shipping container and send it to China.

At least where I am in the US, the Goodwill also participates in the state’s E Waste program, so I just have a little box of used batteries that comes with me when I spring clean and inevitably decide to donate something.

The Goodwills in my area all claim to do e-waste. I've never been to one that will accept e-waste.

Just bury it at the bottom of a box of clothes then.

> A dedicated bin in front of my house for it? No.

I think all supermarkets here have them these days; anyone who sells batteries is required to provide battery recycling facilities, as far as I know.

Also, bizarrely, my _office_ has them, despite not using anything that I can think of that uses disposable batteries at all.

If you’re using a (presumably plastic?) sharps container, you should be very careful that they’re wrapped in something first; otherwise they are a potential fire hazard.

> For plastic trash, it isn’t recyclable

Most plastic is recyclable these days. Now, whether it gets recycled or not is another question, and will depend on local law and facilities, but it’s mostly recyclable.

In Finland any shop that sells small batteries must also offer to recycle them for free.

There is similar rule for bottles/cans with deposits (similar to CRV though values are quite a bit higher, 0.10-0.40€ depending on size/material). If you sell something for which customer needs to pay the deposit for you also need to accept them & pay back the deposit.

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