Friday, July 08, 2005
THE Best Recycling Rate? - No Surprise It's Auto Batteries!
The reason I point out this article is to demonstrate a point regarding the efficiencies of recycling markets in general.
Why do automotive (lead-acid)batteries experience the highest percentage recycling rate (+99% according to the article) when much more valuable materials get thrown in landfills?
The primary reason is that when you replace your battery, you don't want a large, dangerous piece of scrap material sitting around your garage or property. Anyone who has ever replaced a battery in their car or truck has experienced what battery acid does to one's skin. And everyone knows that lead is toxic. ...and there is no other use or value to the dead battery than for recycling. So why keep it?
Dangerous to have around, difficult to store, and no intrinsic value, other than as scrap!
Secondly, there is just enough of a financial incentive to return it to the facility that sold you its replacement - and therein lies the real key. Everyone selling batteries takes the old ones as scrap, usually giving some type of credit or charging a"core fee" against the purchase. And they'll almost always willingly take your old battery even if you didn't buy the replacement from them, because they will make (a little)money from the scrap.
In other words, you've got an extremely efficient scrap auto battery market because almost everyone involved in it is actually involved in the recycling process in every step of the retail and wholesale sales process.
The interesting thing is that even with as efficient a market as this is, there are recycling entrepreneurs who make a living from merely going out and collecting used auto batteries for profit. Even in this type of market it is the individual collector who lends the final few percentage points of completeness, or efficiency to the process.
..And I might add to this note that it is the individual 'junkers' or collection entrepreneurs who are making the most money per unit of scrap by providing that efficiency, as is true with almost every recycling endeavor. Efficiency in collection is the key to most recycling success.
Why do automotive (lead-acid)batteries experience the highest percentage recycling rate (+99% according to the article) when much more valuable materials get thrown in landfills?
The primary reason is that when you replace your battery, you don't want a large, dangerous piece of scrap material sitting around your garage or property. Anyone who has ever replaced a battery in their car or truck has experienced what battery acid does to one's skin. And everyone knows that lead is toxic. ...and there is no other use or value to the dead battery than for recycling. So why keep it?
Dangerous to have around, difficult to store, and no intrinsic value, other than as scrap!
Secondly, there is just enough of a financial incentive to return it to the facility that sold you its replacement - and therein lies the real key. Everyone selling batteries takes the old ones as scrap, usually giving some type of credit or charging a"core fee" against the purchase. And they'll almost always willingly take your old battery even if you didn't buy the replacement from them, because they will make (a little)money from the scrap.
In other words, you've got an extremely efficient scrap auto battery market because almost everyone involved in it is actually involved in the recycling process in every step of the retail and wholesale sales process.
The interesting thing is that even with as efficient a market as this is, there are recycling entrepreneurs who make a living from merely going out and collecting used auto batteries for profit. Even in this type of market it is the individual collector who lends the final few percentage points of completeness, or efficiency to the process.
..And I might add to this note that it is the individual 'junkers' or collection entrepreneurs who are making the most money per unit of scrap by providing that efficiency, as is true with almost every recycling endeavor. Efficiency in collection is the key to most recycling success.
