Activists sent first 100 tons of batteries from Ukraine for recycling abroad: why and how it works

Familiar to everyone since childhood, an ordinary finger-type battery becomes a dangerous waste when it runs out of resources. If it gets into the ground, its toxic substances pollute up to 16 square meters of the soil. To avoid this, we must recycle batteries in a special way. Unfortunately, in Ukraine, there's no single plant or enterprise that would process batteries. However, thanks to "Batteries, Surrender!" in 2020, Ukrainian batteries were sent for recycling for the first time. How they managed to achieve this, we explain in more detail further.

Eurotour for batteries

Liubov Kolosovska, the head of the "Batteries, Surrender!" organization, says that the project appeared in Dnipro in 2012 after a tragic accident. Environmental activist Volodymyr Honcharenko, who was investigating violations in hazardous waste management, was killed. His colleagues decided that to stand against pollutants, they needed to unite and involve as many people as possible in their work, making hazardous waste disposal as transparent as possible. They started with the battery as the most common and recognizable type of such waste.

In 2013, the organization began collecting batteries all over Ukraine. Initially, the batteries were stored in the activists' garages. The initial plan was to send batteries to the Lviv "Argentum" plant. As it turned out later, the plant cannot recycle them. More so, despite batteries having metals and other substances that can be reused, their collection and recycling are unprofitable.

In European countries, the law obliges manufacturers to include the cost of recycling in the battery's price, but in Ukraine, there is no such rule yet. Activists of the "Batteries, Surrender!" organization made significant efforts to break the deadlock. They involved several supermarket chains in the initiative, that decided to sell batteries only of the manufacturers who agreed to finance the recycling partially. The rest is covered by the partner networks.

In 2020, they sent Ukrainian batteries for recycling for the first time thanks to an organization's well-functioning model. It looks like this: first, activists and partner networks collect batteries and transport them to a warehouse. There, the carrier company, which has a special contract, keeps them until shipment and helps load them into the car before shipment. When they've collected 20 tons of batteries in the warehouse, they place the batteries in special barrels, regularly adding a layer of dielectric. They do it to protect the batteries, which can be explosive in high concentrations.

Then the barrels with batteries are loaded into a truck that goes to the Greenwee plant in Romania. This plant recycles all battery types, except for lithium-ion ones. They continue their journey to a special plant in Germany. To organize such transportation, the organization had to get a special permit agreed with the environmental ministries of both countries. In 10 months of 2020, 100 tons of batteries went to Europe for recycling, and they plan to send another 20 tons of batteries by the end of the year.

Guaranteed processing means paid processing

Despite the impressive figures, 120 tons make up only 4% of the total weight of 3,250 tons of batteries imported into Ukraine each year. Increasing the number of recyclable batteries from 0% to 4% is a tremendous achievement, but there's still a lot of work ahead. Liubov says that it's necessary to change both the law and people's perceptions radically in order to increase this figure significantly: "The phrase "Waste to income" is, in fact, a Soviet illusion, because most types of waste need paying extra to dispose of, not the other way around."

Processing a ton of batteries at the Greenwee plant costs $400-500, but the cost increases significantly because of storage and transportation. It'll be wrong to finance recycling from the budget of a country or city from a strategic perspective. While someone may consume 100 batteries a year, another may not use 10.

Constructing a processing plant in Ukraine also won't be profitable until the amount of paid processing reaches at least 800 tons of batteries per year. Therefore, the organization has been advocating for a law for more than a year which would oblige all battery suppliers in Ukraine to include the delivery and recycling cost in each battery's price.

To help solve this problem here and now, many partial people are willing to pay for the overtime of their batteries. To do this, the organization provides a special box that you can place in the office or a residential building's entrance. It holds up to 10 kg of batteries and costs UAH 5,000. The cost includes the delivery of batteries to the warehouse, shipping, and recycling in Romania, and a contribution to the organization's development. For over 7 years, the entire team of "Batteries, Surrender!" has worked and developed with the help of such contributions and voluntary donations.

Another significant problem with recycling batteries in Ukraine is collecting points that don't disclose where their batteries go. Liubov says that in their case, they accompany each batch of batteries with a huge number of reports and documentation, allowing you to make sure that the collected batteries are actually recycled, not thrown away in the nearby forest. Unfortunately, not everyone collecting batteries has such reports.

What you can do to dispose of batteries properly and support their recycling in Ukraine?

• First, everyone can hand over their batteries to retail chains, where the cost of recycling is paid for. Collecting containers have a special holographic "guaranteed recycling" sticker at such points.
• Second, you can order a box to collect batteries at your company's office or your home, paying for your batteries collecting.
• Third, you can support the "Batteries, Surrender!" organization financially or informationally, helping them with likes and reposts. 

In any case, the key thing to do is to think about where your batteries or other hazardous waste go and take responsibility for their proper disposal. "As long as we expect that somebody has to pay us for our environmental behavior, not only will they not pay us, but we'll also pay ourselves in the hospital later," Liubov says.