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Battery Recycling Week Helps the Environment

 

Household Batteries pose a great risk to the environment. If they are thrown into the bin they are most likely to end up in landfill, where toxic substances like cadmium, nickel and mercury are leached into the surrounding environment.

 

Through our RecyclePak hazardous waste service, Veolia Environmental Services now offers battery and mobile phone recycling to customers; by doing this the aforementioned toxic chemicals and materials are removed and disposed of safely, whilst the valuable metals and other recyclable materials are recovered and reused.

In late October, Veolia Environmental Services: Pyrmont, Rosehill, Newcastle and Wollongong offices participated in our first Battery Recycling Week. This was an internal sustainability initiative whereby Veolia staff were encouraged to bring in old batteries and mobiles phones, and to place them in the RecyclePak buckets located around the offices.

These items were collected and sent to a Sims E-Recycling depository to be recycled. As a result, across the four offices, Veolia staff recycled over 9kg of batteries and phones. These items were not only diverted from landfill, but through recycling, approximately 900g of zinc and 450g of manganese was also recovered.. After such a successful first trial future expansion of Battery Recycling Week is set to be rolled out to all national sites and locations

For all media related enquiries please contact Renee Fry - National Corporate Affairs Manager on (02) 8571 0109

For more information regarding Veolia Environmental Services E-Waste recycling services http://www.veoliaes.com.au/commercial-services/waste-collection-and-recycling/electronic-waste-recycling.asp