Notice Regarding City's Battery Recycling Program
Battery Recycling Program Limited to Individual Residents Only - Not Institutions
The City of Evanston, as a member community of the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC), began a battery recycling program this January. This program was started for individual households because household alkaline batteries are no longer accepted at IEPA-sponsored Household Hazardous Waste events due to their benign nature and high recycling costs.
Learn more about Evanston's Battery Recycling Program and Locations here>>>
With that said, a situation has come up in a different SWANCC community regarding a school district collecting batteries from school families. This method of collecting materials for any of SWANCC’s special material programs is not permitted.
SWANCC operates its special material collection program under the Universal Waste Law, which is both a Federal and State rule. Even though alkaline batteries are not regulated waste, they must only be accepted from an individual resident, not by the truck load in aggregate, even if it is residentially generated.
Under this rule, it goes from being residential waste to commercial waste. As you may know, it costs money to recycle alkaline batteries because there is very little value to the recycler. They are also benign to the environment if thrown away in the garbage. The value for the recycler is in the rechargeable batteries.
Interstate Batteries is kind enough to work with SWANCC communities to provide this program at no cost. SWANCC does not want to dump a large amount of alkaline batteries at the recycler and expect them to pay for the recycling. The recycler needs rechargeable batteries mixed with the alkaline to off-set processing costs – and not in huge volumes.
Therefore, the city, in conjunction with SWANCC, will only take batteries from individuals, not from schools, institutions or businesses that have collected on their employees' behalf.