Home > Car Parts Info Center > Recycling car batteries

Recycling car batteries

Are you worried about recycling car batteries? How can you be sure that you car battery is recycled? Well, if you replace your battery at a service center, then they will take care of it for you. On the other hand, if you are replacing it yourself, you can take your old battery to the store where you bought your new one, and they should take care of it for you.

Recycling car batteries – or, at least, making sure that they make it to the recycling center – is relatively easy for a consumer. Therefore, you really need to make sure that it gets done! Batteries, if thrown into a junkyard or discarded elsewhere, can be very dangerous to the environment. The acid within them can be a hazard if not properly processed, and if it IS properly processed, it can be used in a new generation of batteries instead of posing a risk to the surrounding area.

Because of this danger, recycling them is very important. So, what is it about car batteries that make them so dangerous? They seem perfectly safe when they are powering your vehicle, right? Well, the batteries that you use in your car are lead-acid batteries. This means that the inside of the battery are sheets of lead metal in sulfuric acid.

If your battery has any leaks, it can cause very severe chemical burns if it comes in contact with your skin or eyes. And, as you can imagine, the components of lead-acid batteries are very harmful to the environment, as well.

Fortunately, people have begun to realize the harmful effects that lead-acid batteries have on the environment of junkyards and dumps. This does not mean that companies have stopped making lead-acid batteries. (After all, this kind of battery is easy to manufacture, easy to charge and re-charge, low cost, and provides a high voltage.) Rather, the recycling of car batteries has become the norm.

Virtually all car batteries are recycled these days. No one simply discards them like they used to. Nobody wants toxic lead floating around the environment! These days, about 60% of the world’ lead supply comes from recycled car batteries. While lead has a bad wrap as a toxic material, the truth of the matter is that for industrial and other uses where it doesn’t come into contact with humans, lead is a great option, and re-using it helps make it an inexpensive and environmentally friendly one as well. Recycling car batteries has become the norm, and the environment thanks us for it, and so will our children.

People are even finding very creative ways of recycling car batteries. In fact, KI even makes a chair called the “Daylight” chair that is made from both recycled batteries (from the plastic casings… not the lead and acid!) and old safety belts. This kind of innovation is helping lead the way towards a brighter, more responsible tomorrow.