Recycling batteries - keeping things simple

Ask your students how many batteries they get through in say a week or a month and then get them to estimate how many batteries are used up in the UK every year. The latter figure is in excess of 600 million and clearly it poses a major challenge in terms of recycling and reducing the contribution to landfill. But the UK has a dreadful record in recycling old batteries - fewer than 3% are recycled each year, the vast major are dumped creating externalities along the way. This BBC news video reports on a new EU law which makes it pretty simple for consumers to deposit their used batteries at retail outlets. No need for a battery tax, just an accessible scheme to change our default behaviour.