Councils are banning putting batteries in the bin, so what on earth should you do with them?

Thursday, 3 April 2025

Did you know that in some cities in New Zealand - including Wellington - you are not allowed to put batteries in your household rubbish?

This has been the case in the capital since 2020, when the council passed the Solid Waste Management and Minimisation Bylaw.

Polly Griffiths, sustainability manager for Wellington’s Sustainability Trust, says there are a few reasons why people need to be careful around battery disposal, and why some councils have mandated it.

First, batteries contain harmful chemicals that can leech into soil and waterways when they are buried in landfills.

In the case of standard household batteries - think the AA and AAA kind - these substances include heavy metals like lead and mercury.

Plus, those same batteries contain valuable materials that are useful when recycled.

“It is important to recover these materials and reduce the requirement to mine them,” Griffiths said.

Phoenix Recycling works in the sorting part of the battery-recycling chain. They send products overseas where the materials are extracted and re-used.

Product stewardship manager Jasmine Faulkner said there are a range of materials to be recycled. “Steel, obviously, just gets recycled into brand new steel,” she said.

“Then zinc and manganese from alkaline batteries can be recycled to be made into new batteries. Black mass from lithium batteries is also reused to be made into brand new batteries. And the nickel from nickel-cadmium batteries is re-used, usually, to go into stainless steel or new batteries.”

Black mass refers to the mixture of valuable materials - like lithium, copper, manganese and cobalt - that is recycled from lithium batteries.

The other big reason that batteries should not be thrown in household rubbish is fire risk. Batteries have been known to lead to fires at landfills, or even in rubbish trucks.

Auckland Council’s general manager of waste solutions, Justine Have, said her team has not been able to confirm the cause of Auckland’s most recent rubbish truck blaze, but “an ever-increasing number of battery-powered devices and batteries in household bins are the most-likely cause”.

She went on to explain that a battery’s combination of flammable electrolyte and stored energy can result in the rapid and uncontrolled release of heat energy, known as thermal runaway.

“During thermal runaway, toxic gases are emitted and the battery can re-ignite even after being extinguished,” Have said.

Battery recycling points are taking off

When Wellington banned batteries from household waste in 2020, residents had to take them to the Southern Landfill transfer station instead. They were then encased in concrete and landfilled, to ensure no environmental harm was caused.

Since February 2022, Wellington City Council has run a battery recycling trial. Residents can drop them off at a number of locations - from libraries, to community centres to the Sustainability Trust - and they are sent off for recycling.

Figures provided by the council show more and more people are getting behind this.

In the first year, from February 2022 to January 2023, 4,298 kg of batteries were handed in to drop-off locations. In year two, this increased to 5,372 kg.

Last year - from February 2024 to January 2025 - 5,853 kg of batteries were recycled by Wellingtonians.

These figures don’t include batteries handed in to private businesses offering recycling services, like Bunnings and Mitre 10 stores.

It is not just Wellington running a recycling scheme. Many councils around the motu, including Rangitikei, Kapiti, Christchurch and Southland, operate similar collection points.

What if my batteries are leaking or damaged?

Batteries that are damaged in any way pose an even greater risk, and cannot be recycled. In Wellington, they must be taken to the Southern Landfill transfer station where they are still encased in concrete and buried.

Polly Griffiths said: “If they are swollen, leaky, rusty or corroded, they are basically a hazardous waste item.”

What happens after you drop them off?

There are a number of companies collecting batteries from collection points across the motu. For the Sustainability Trust, it is Echo Waste in Lower Hutt. For more than 30 district councils and all Mitre 10 stores, it is Phoenix Recycling.

Phoenix’s Jasmine Faulkner said they have worked hard in recent years to develop safer ways for storing battery waste before it gets to them.

“Instead of the standard being plastic buckets and drums and stuff, we've brought in a better standard of aggregation. So we offer our suppliers fire resistant liners and [dangerous goods] rated cartons, certified to a UN standard,” she said.

“In addition to that, for retail locations - and even some council locations - we have established smart bins.”

These bins have an internal heat sensor, which is connected to an independent alarm monitoring company when it rises above a certain threshold. The units are also fitted with fire suppression.

Once Phoenix takes custody of the batteries, they are sorted into chemistry and sub chemistry, packaged in accordance with international regulations and shipped overseas for recycling.

“We have two downstream partners, one in Japan and one in South Korea. All batteries we receive are Exported under approved Hazardous Waste permits issued by the NZ Environmental Protection Authority.”

At those locations the valuable materials - mentioned above - are extracted, re-used, and the circle starts again.

An earlier version of this story quoted Phoenix Recycling as saying it was working to establish smart bins. The company now advises smart bins have already been established. (Amended 11.17am, 4/04/2025)