When smartphone batteries reach the end of their useful life, they often end up in a drawer at home even though there are many advantages to recycling them.
Smartphones have become everyday essentials for many of us, containing everything from our phone numbers to our banking details.
While the lithium batteries that power our smartphones can be recycled, many still end up sitting idle in a cupboard or worse still, they end up in the general waste bin.
So, when it comes time to replace your smartphone, remember these five benefits to recycling your smartphone battery:
1. Ensure used smartphone batteries are kept safe
Smartphone batteries need to be kept safe and out of landfill, where they risk exploding or catching fire if they are damaged or become over-heated, according to the Australian Battery Recycling Initiative.
Some types of used lithium batteries are more likely to cause fires than others, so they need to be stored and handled by experts.
Recycling old batteries is a smart way to discard of old batteries safely and ensure they don’t unexpectedly harm someone or start a fire.
2. Recover non-renewable resources
The more we depend on electronic devices like smartphones and laptops, the more batteries are needed.
This often means raw finite resources like lithium, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper and aluminium need to be mined and processed to make new batteries.
Recycling materials found within old batteries is a much more attractive solution for manufacturers because the content of metals in phone batteries is up to 100 times higher than in raw ores.
Making new products out of recycled phone batteries also has just 10% of the environmental footprint that primary mining has.
3. Keep harmful materials out of the environment
Most batteries contain unsafe materials such as mercury and can pollute the environment if they’re not disposed of properly.
For example, when batteries are discarded into the household general rubbish, they end up in landfill where they can leak toxic metals and chemicals into the ground and waterways.
Materials like mercury can spread throughout the environment, causing lethal and long-term mercury poisoning that can devastate communities.
Recycling batteries, including smartphone batteries, is the most environmentally friendly way to dispose of used battery cells.
4. Meet demands for smartphone battery recycling
Customers are increasingly expecting organisations to do their bit for the environment and recycling is one way to boost your sustainability activities.
In 2018, 73% of global consumers said they would definitely or probably change their consumption habits to reduce their environmental impact and almost half said they would pay more for products associated with sustainable practices, according to Nielsen.
Looking at batteries specifically, more than three-quarters of consumers agreed that it was important to recycle batteries rather than dumping them, according to 2014 IPSOS research.
5. It’s incredibly easy to recycle smartphone batteries
Recycling batteries is very easy thanks to the various recycling programs available in Australia.
Households can use the Recycling Near You and the MobileMuster websites to find their closest battery collection points.
For workplaces that produce larger volumes of batteries, there are commercial-scale recycling options available too.
As one of Australia’s largest battery recyclers, Ecocycle can tailor a battery recycling program with pre-paid collection buckets of a size that suits your organisation.
Then, when it’s full, just give us a call and we’ll swap it for an empty one. It’s that simple!
If you want to learn more about our battery recycling options, give us a call on 1300 32 62 92 or fill in the form below.
