Batteries: you probably just use them up and buy new ones, right? Did you know that you can recycle them? In fact, you can recycle nearly every kind of battery there is, not just car batteries. There are a lot of battery components that are recyclable, and there are good reasons for recycling batteries. Here is the short list of battery parts that you can recycle, and why you should.

Copper

Copper is highly conductive and difficult to mine and extract from the rocks around it. Yet, people use tons of copper to make electrical wire, batteries, pipes, etc., every year. Since it is a natural resource, you have to understand that this resource is finite. Eventually, all copper will be mined from the Earth, and then what? Only recycling can take the copper out of use and reduce the demand for this resource to be pulled out of the earth. Battery recycling takes all of the copper out of them and transforms it into more batteries, pipes, etc..

Lead

Lead — honest-to-goodness, real lead — is banned from all products and all markets in the U.S. with the exception of batteries and some paint. Even so, it is used sparingly, and batteries containing lead are required by law to be recycled. Car batteries have the most lead, which is why you have to bring your dead battery to the auto parts store to trade it in for a new battery. No new lead is mined in this country because of how lethal the substance can be.

Steel

Batteries all contain some steel. The steel may be used inside the batteries to generate and control electrical charges, or the steel may act as an outer casing. Steel is invaluable for hundreds of products. Because of the lengthy process of smelting steel, every scrap of it is worth recycling.

Plastic

Bigger batteries, particularly batteries for electric-powered scooters, kids' toy cars, video cameras, etc., are all encased in plastic. It costs hundreds of dollars to produce the plastic casings for these batteries, and the process is not exactly earth-friendly. However, if you recycle batteries, these plastic casings go back to plastics factories where they can be reused or melted down and remolded for more battery casings. This makes the plastic process a little more earth-friendly than the first time around, while simultaneously providing consumers with more of the batteries they need. All it takes is a ride to a battery recycling location

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