From: "John Reynolds" To: "Dry Drayton News" ; "Bar Hill News" ; "Bar Hill Parish Council" ; "Bar Hill website" ; "Binnie Harvey-Boxworth" ; "Boxworth Parish Council" ; "Dry Drayton Web Site" ; "Girton Parish Council" ; "Girton Parish News" ; "Irish Nick-Dry Drayton" ; "Lolworth Parish Council" Subject: Recycling old batteries, are you playing your part Date: 22 July 2006 19:38 Briefing The County Council and the UK as a whole has an excellent record of recycling car batteries; DEFRA estimate that over 90% of all such batteries used in the UK are recycled. All 10 of the Council's household waste recycling centres collect car batteries and last year (2005/6) we recycled 259 tonnes. Contractors receive a small income from the lead in the batteries. Unfortunately our record at national level on household batteries is not good; DEFRA estimate that less than 2% of these are recycled. The main reason for this is that until about 18 months ago there was no battery recycling plant in the UK; trial schemes to collect household batteries that were run prior to this all failed due to the cost of exporting the batteries to plants in France and Germany. G.& P. Batteries operate the UK recycling plant near Wolverhampton, and in February last year the Council contracted them to place household battery banks at all 10 of our recycling centres. We launched this service with a press release and there is information on the Council's web site. These collections are relatively expensive, £450 per site per year, and we expect to collect around 2 tonnes of household batteries a year. This equates to a cost of around £2,000 per tonne as opposed to £35 per tonne landfill costs. A new EU battery directive is likely to come into force in 2008; this will require battery producers to fund recycling collections. John Reynolds -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.3/395 - Release Date: 21/07/2006