The right way of recycling batteries

The Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine started the national program of collecting and recycling used batteries called “Recycle Them Right!” The program is pilot. Its purpose is “to define the extent of the problem (the number of batteries) and people’s readiness to solve it (the habit of throwing batteries into special containers).” “Similar actions were initiated at different time and in different places. The program ‘Recycle Them Right’ suggested by MTS company is unique since it is national wide and systematic,” experts of the ministry emphasized. MTS involves all its shops and offices all over Ukraine into batteries recycling. Other organizations can also join the initiative. Commercial organizations, universities, housing and utility enterprises also expressed their willingness to participate. We, the ministry, define companies that will store and recycle batteries and watch the duly organization of this process from collecting to recycling. However, now it is difficult to speak about certain amounts and time when the existing companies will start working at their full capacity.”

However, today there are quite many containers for collecting batteries all over Ukraine – at the beginning of the past year Den/The Day wrote about the ECOFAN initiative for collecting and recycling batteries. Back then we wrote about the problem of recycling.

Lately drop-off stations for used batteries have appeared in most Ukrainian cities (mainly at the initiative of public activists and business representatives). However, the number of stations for their recycling has not grown. On October 8, during the opening of the event the Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Oleh PROSKURIAKOV remarked: “Collected batteries will be recycled at the capacities of Ukrainian enterprises and exported,” as reported by UKRINFORM. The information The Day was provided with by the press service of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources states that “Ukraine does not have licensed enterprises for recycling unsorted used batteries, wastes and scrap of electric and electronic parts containing accumulator batteries and other batteries.”

On the Ukrainian territory there is only one plant of this kind, the State Enterprise “Argentum” in Lviv. However, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources emphasized that “to collect, process, store, burry, neutralize, and recycle all kinds of industrial and domestic wastes the state ecological expertise is mandatory. The Ministry does not have the information about executing the state ecological expertise of recycling technology for household chemical sources of energy at the State Enterprise ‘Argentum.’” The Ministry has not issued the license to “Argentum.” So, this enterprise is out of bounds as well.

However, the director of the innovation center at the State Enterprise “Argentum” Taras KOHUT disagreed with the conclusion of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources in his conversation with The Day: “Collection, transportation, and processing of chemical energy sources do not have to be licensed, according to the Ukrainian legislation. Today we can process twice as much batteries as we collect. If the amount of collected batteries starts growing, it will be easy to raise our capacity. It is much more expensive to create the collection system than recycling system: 80 percent of resources are used for collection and logistics and only 20 percent for recycling. Now we are collecting over a ton of batteries a month: some of them are recycled and some of them are stored. In Ukraine over 10 tons of chemical sources of energy are used every day. It is unrealistic to collect them. In Europe 40 to 50 percent are collected and this is a very good number. With this amount of batteries collected we would need 5 to 10 production capacities to recycle them. We are ready to share the technologies as they are not complicated.”

The Day addressed Ryta OKSIUTA, public activist, founder of “Vivabat” project, first initiator of collecting and recycling batteries in Ukraine, asking her to comment on the new project.

“The action of batteries mass collecting is starting, however, it is unclear what will be done with them after that. It is necessary to not only open drop-off stations, but also resolve the question of batteries ecological recycling. The program has to be governmental to provide the logistics. There should be a lot of accessible drop-off stations but the government has to provide security guarantees at all levels. The base of ‘Argentum’ should be used to build a decent plant that would meet all standards and would allow recycling batteries without polluting the environment. It would be great if this problem was solved with the help of MTS, however, I am afraid it might be another nice campaign without any strategic plan.”