Battery Recycling Project
Founder: Samarah Agrawal
From 2022-2025, over 20,000 batteries were collected and recycled at the Loudoun county Hazardous Material Recycling Drive!
Battery Recycling Project
Founder: Samarah Agrawal
I started the battery recycling project movement to inform and persuade members of our community to recycle batteries in the right way in order to protect our environment. I started off small in our school and eventually hope to place battery boxes in all the schools in my county.
Watch this video to learn more about how hazardous batteries are!
When batteries are discarded, they pose a significant threat to the environment through air, water, and soil pollution. One of the ways batteries contribute to air pollution is through the release of greenhouse gas emissions during their decomposition in landfills, which is caused by a photochemical reaction. Additionally, batteries contain harmful substances such as acids, chemicals, and metals like lead, manganese, nickel, mercury, and lithium. When these substances leach into the soil, they can result in heavy metal poisoning, posing a risk to flora and fauna. Furthermore, these pollutants can find their way into water bodies, accumulating in plants and animals, and posing a health risk to both animals, including humans, who consume them. The consumption of contaminated plants and animals can lead to serious diseases like cancer, putting the health of ecosystems and communities at risk.
Less than 5% of batteries are recycled and collected. Considering that by 2030 there will be over 140 million electric vehicles each of them consisting of a certain amount of Lithium-ion battery, this could be a major problem. In order to spread awareness of this problem and to contribute to solving this I created a battery box and placed it in my school's main office on January 9, 2023. Within a month of having the box, we collected 5000+ batteries in our school.
After collecting all of these batteries, I separated the Lithium and Alkaline batteries in order to follow hazardous material recycling rules. On March 18, 2023, I went to the Loudoun County Recycling event.
In the future, I plan on continuing to go to this event as it is planned for every month in different communities. See Loudoun County Recycling Drives page to see the rest of the events I attended.
More event dates are provided below.