Battery recycling

WATCH: Michelle Wilkinson explains the different types of batteries being recycled at Albury City Waste Management Centre.

Transcript

00:00We're here at our recycling centre at the Albury Waste Management Centre today to talk about the

00:05most common thing that Australians throw away in our bins but they shouldn't be and it's a hazardous

00:11item, batteries. So we actually should be bringing our batteries to our local recycling points so

00:18your household standard batteries like these ones we can take to council offices, libraries,

00:24supermarkets, office works, places like that and then we're lucky enough to collect all sorts of

00:31different batteries things like your embedded batteries so you might not be able to see the

00:36battery or pull it out so power banks, different types of battery packs we collect those, smoke

00:47detectors, vapes all of those sort of batteries you need to bring here to the Albury Waste Management

00:52Centre so you don't need to pull them apart but the next time you're out here collect them all up and

00:57and bring them out here so we can send them away for recycling. Even tiny batteries like an earbud

01:03battery have been known to start a fire because lithium can be very reactive when it's under pressure

01:09in a landfill and so far this year we've had three fires in our landfill here at Albury. That's a great

01:15recommendation now to tape up your batteries particularly these button batteries or any

01:20lithium batteries they're very reactive under pressure so in our waste trucks or in our landfills we're

01:26starting to see that when they come into contact with something else under pressure they can be an

01:31ignition source for fires so keeps you safe keeps your family safe and also keeps all the recyclers and

01:39all our waste workers safe as well.

01:45you