Beginning this year, households in Seattle are banned from tossing old batteries in the trash — including everything from the tiny batteries that power hearing aids to those juicing up electric bikes.
The ban was triggered because of dangers posed by waste batteries, which can ignite and cause fires or leak dangerous chemicals. Recycling batteries also has environmental benefits by reclaiming valuable materials rather than losing them to landfills.
“It just really underscores the importance of making sure that people do the right thing with batteries,” said Leo Raudys, CEO of the nonprofit Call2Recycle.
In the past three years, the Seattle Fire Department has responded to eight fires at waste transfer sites and batteries were the likely cause of some of them, according to Seattle Public Utilities (SPU). In just the past two years, the fire department has responded to 79 fires around the city directly attributed to lithium-ion batteries, many of which were improperly charged, stored or disposed of.
Nationwide, lithium metal or lithium-ion batteries were the cause or likely cause of 245 fires at facilities including landfills, garbage trucks, and recycling plants, according to seven years of data analyzed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
California and Washington, D.C., have also banned the disposal of single use and rechargeable batteries, according to Call2Recycle. New York, Florida, New Jersey and Minnesota have narrower bans.
So what’s the trash alternative? Seattle residents have a variety of battery disposal options:
- SPU North or South Transfer Stations and the utilities’ Household Hazardous Waste Management accept all manner of batteries for free drop-off.
- SPU customers can request a special item pickup, and for $5 the utility will pick up two, one-gallon ziploc bags of undamaged batteries along with trash.
- Use Call2Recycle to look for a retail site accepting used batteries, though many locations are limited to rechargeable batteries.
- Ridwell, a private company that collects and recycles items including basic electronics batteries, offers a $14 per month subscription service.
Washington’s battery recycling options will be expanding. State lawmakers last year passed rules requiring battery producers to fund a more robust system of battery collection so that a wider variety of batteries can be dropped off at retail locations. The legislation also sets recycling targets and requires public education and outreach. The new rules don’t go into effect until 2027.
But as more and more consumer items include batteries, Seattle decided to take action now.
“We have enough of a [collection] system in place that we felt it was time to get moving on this,” said Becca Fong, an outreach manager with SPU.
And while the city has officially banned people from putting batteries in the trash, the utility won’t become battery police and take aggressive action against violators. If a trash hauler notices that a household is repeatedly putting batteries in their garbage, they can place what’s known as an “oops” tag on the trash can to bring attention to the misplaced waste. If that doesn’t change behavior, SPU will reach out with a phone call, letter or both to help educate a household, Fong said.
Since 2015, Seattle has prohibited food waste and recyclable materials such as aluminum cans, glass, paper and plastics from trash cans. The city follows the same outreach and education process for violators of those bans.
“We actually find a very high level of compliance,” Fong said, adding that Seattle customers “are very savvy and very aware. The ethos of recycling is really ingrained.”
The city also bans people from tossing electronics in the trash, including TVs, computers and other devices. SPU is using the new battery ban to remind customers that e-waste is also prohibited in the trash.
At the end of March, SPU is sending calendars to households with information on trash and recycling pick-up dates. Included will be information on the new battery waste ban and details about the city’s online “where does it go” look-up tool, which has instructions on disposing thousands of different items.
Additional public awareness campaigns will follow in the spring and early fall.
Gerrine Pan, Ridwell’s vice president of partnerships, said there are two big hurdles to getting people to properly dispose of waste batteries and other materials: the lack of convenience, such as having to drive to recycling locations, and the lack of awareness about disposal options.
“That poses a challenge for the overall collection effort,” Pan said. “And that is really how Ridwell began. It started as a father and son who had a weekend project to collect batteries from people and asked their neighbors, ‘We’re going to take this over to the transfer station, do you want us to take it?'”
The Seattle-based company collected 444,679 pounds of batteries last year alone. It has 90,000 members in seven states. The company picks up batteries commonly found in household electronics, and does not collect take car batteries, large lithium ion batteries and lead acid batteries.
Many e-bike manufacturers and retailers will accept used batteries from their vehicles. In Seattle that includes REI, Rad Power Bikes, and others.
Rad is shipping its batteries to Redwood Materials, a Nevada-based company that recycles lithium-ion batteries from cars and bikes. Rad has so far recycled 1,500 batteries, according to a spokesperson.
Supporters of these initiatives are eager for the word to get out on the importance of battery recycling.
“This is an increasingly serious issue. It’s just not a good idea to put these [batteries] in the trash, and recycling is a good thing,” said Raudys of Call2Recycle. “Anytime you have potential for a fire at a facility, you have the potential that somebody’s going to get hurt, or a facility’s going to burn down.”
Editor’s note: Story was updated to clarify information on the cause of fires at Seattle transfer stations.
