While reading instructions on 'Battery Care and Use' in my mobile phone hand-book, apart from many other useful instructions I came across this 'strange' advice also. "The battery should never be placed in the Municipal waste. Use the battery disposal facility. Please check local regulations for disposal of batteries."
Frankly, I being an electronics engineer, knew quite a lot about the alkaline, nickel cadmium, lead acid, mercury type and many other batteries but had never given a thought to the disposal of the used dry as well as wet batteries and the toxic fumes and acidic residues that would ooze out of them after their decaying. We use millions of pencil cells (batteries) in all sorts of electronic gadgets, remote controls, calculators, toys, and what not. What health hazards these could produce for the garbage collectors and others handling such waste with their bare hands and without the masks.
A German wife of my friend told me that in Germany it is an offence to dispose off a battery in a place other than the Battery Disposal Facility made available by the municipality at appropriate places, from where the used batteries are collected, centrally salvaged and their metal and the materials wherever possible recycled.
Have our environmentalists, government or the NGOs ever thought of it?
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