Is it OK to throw out household batteries like the ones in my flashlight or my old cell phone battery?

Every battery is made up of different chemicals that affect the environment in different ways, but as a general rule of thumb, NEVER throw away batteries. There are plenty of places that will accept your old batteries and recycle them for you. Check here to identify your old batteries, and use the green recycling locator box at the top of this page to find out where to recycle them.

As of June 17th 2011 we have upgraded our comment system to use Facebook comments. The below comments are closed and are listed for historical purposes.

6 Archived Comments

  1. fern

    posted on August 23rd, 2007 at 8:11 am

    My household hazardous waste recyling center has directed me to dispose of regular (non-rechargeable) batteries in the trash. They won’t accept them.

  2. recycle mobiles

    posted on October 15th, 2008 at 5:40 am

    Why only cell phone batteries, you should have the habit of <a href="http://www.fonebank.com/mobile_phones_to_sell_for_cash.aspx&quot; title="recycling mobile phones" rel="nofollow">recycling mobile phones</a> as it saves the environment and helps you get rid of your old mobiles. You get some websites offering this service

  3. kardozo

    posted on May 26th, 2009 at 2:46 am

    plant in house

  4. Sacramento Web Design

    posted on September 1st, 2009 at 3:24 pm

    Wow great web design

  5. sarah

    posted on September 17th, 2009 at 7:03 am

    I’m visiting Wisconsin where no place in the entire state seems to take household batteries. They are all landfill. Why?

  6. trixen

    posted on July 17th, 2010 at 6:07 pm

    Put ‘em to good use… throw ‘em at cars with Obama stickers on them. lol

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