Histon & Impington residents can now leave small plastic bags containing used batteries on top of any of their bins – green, black or blue – for weekly collection by crews on their usual rounds.
Previously, Greater Cambridge Shared Waste Service asked households to bag used batteries and tie them to the handles of their blue bin only.
Batteries that can be placed out for collection at the kerbside include AA and AAA, C and D, and button cells, but not mobile phone or laptop batteries or any batteries attached to a device. These should be recycled as small electrical items.
The new system doesn’t apply to residents of flats with shared bins, who should take them to public battery collection points, such as Tesco in Histon, where staff will recycle used batteries if customers take them to the counter.
Cllr Henry Batchelor, Lead Cabinet Member for Environmental Services and Licensing at South Cambridgeshire District Council said: “…only half of the up to 1 billion batteries thrown away in the UK each year are recycled correctly. Some of those that end up in bins get damaged and catch fire. We’ve seen this first-hand with fires in our bin lorries, including near Orchard Park back in October…
“We hope that by making batteries easier to recycle regularly we can help residents to safely recycle all their batteries.”