Rochford District Council is pleased to announce yet another initiative to help the environment as it aims to become one of the greenest local authorities in the country.

Having won a National Recycling Award for increasing recycling rates, as well as helping nearly a hundred people have their homes thermal imaged as part of the ClimateCO2de Strategy, the Council has now introduced household battery recycling boxes across a number of locations in the District.

The boxes are located in the Council reception area in South Street, Rochford and also the Civic Suite in Hockley Road, Rayleigh. There are also plans to locate battery recycling boxes at other public areas over the next few months.

According to figures from WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) around 600 million UK household batteries (22,000 tonnes) – the equivalent weight of 110 Jumbo Jets – are sent to landfill unnecessarily every year.

Batteries contain various hazardous metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, zinc, manganese and lithium. Heavy metals have the potential to leach slowly into soil, groundwater or surface water and by introducing a household battery recycling scheme, the Council can start to help to address this problem.

The Council is keen for residents to engage with the new scheme and want to encourage them to use the battery recycling boxes. Rochford District Council’s Portfolio Holder for the Environment, Councillor Michael Starke said: “Residents in the Rochford District currently have the facilities to recycle a wide range of materials and it is fantastic that we are now able to increase this to include batteries. The chemicals in batteries are extremely damaging to the environment, so I would encourage residents to start using these recycling boxes”.

There are other ways that residents can reduce the number of batteries that are sent to landfill, for example by recycling household batteries and car batteries at the Recycling Centre for Household Waste in Castle Road, Rayleigh.

However, in order to reduce the number of batteries that are used in the first place, rechargeable batteries are a good option. Newer rechargeable batteries known as nickel metal hydride are preferable to older rechargeable batteries that include nickel cadmium.

From February 2010, shops selling more than 32kg of batteries a year (approx 345 x four-packs of AA batteries) will have to provide battery recycling collection facilities in-store. This means there will be lots more places such as supermarkets where you can take your old batteries for recycling.