We are big proponents of battery recycling here at Paleblue. We hope you are. too.

At recent tradeshows, our team fielded a common question we get on where we recommend people recycle their batteries. Most people just don’t realize how easy battery recycling typically is. It has never occurred to most people we talk to that there are several retail stores within a few minutes of their house that accept batteries for recycling. It seems most people don’t notice these drop-offs in the retailers since thy are not immediately obvious. Stores usually give the best and most obvious locations in the store to profit generating activities, of course.

You can find a list of battery recycling centers in your area by visiting Call2Recycle. They offer a handy little tool that will locate the nearest drop-off location after you enter your zip code. There are plenty of participating retailers, including a well-known DIY chain our customer recently told us about.

Replacing an Old Drill (and Battery)

We recently spoke with a gentleman about his cordless drill battery (a topic that comes up a lot) He owned an old battery-powered drill that he has had for many years. At any rate, there came a point at which the drill's batteries no longer held a charge sufficient enough to do any work. That was just a couple of months ago. So he decided it was time to buy a new drill.

His old drill needed NiCad batteries. That's one of the reasons he couldn't find replacements (as many new drills are Lithium-ion). His new drill came with a lithium-ion battery. That is a complete upgrade performance wise, but results in some obsolete technology and waste. But what about the old NiCads?

He remembered reading about Call2Recycle in one of our blog posts. He hit up their site, entered his zip code, and discovered that the big box DIY store less than two miles up the road accepted all sorts of rechargeable batteries for recycling. Problem solved.

They Took His Consumer Batteries, Too

This customer was all set to run his old drill batteries over when he remembered he had a bunch of dead NiCad consumer batteries in his drawer and a box of household batteries in the garage. So, he gathered them up and killed two proverbial birds with one stone on his next trip to the store.

Not Too Much Effort

The moral of this story (really, it is a true story) is this: recycling your old batteries in this day and age doesn't require too much effort. Turns out, the old batteries gathering dust and corroding in your home or garage are much easier to get rid of. It's not like anyone is asking you to drive twenty miles to a drop box in the middle of nowhere and then pay to leave your batteries. Organizations like Call2Recycle make it easy to find a drop-off location in your area.

You know we are on a mission to replace disposable alkaline batteries with rechargeable lithium-ion cells. We hope you will join us in that mission. We would also like to encourage people to recycle their old batteries too.