Sustainable Moraga

The Oakland Tribune - April 3, 2006 
Douglas Fischer, staff writer

MORAGA — Myrto Petreas and two friends did not imagine success could be so bittersweet
when they started an ad hoc battery collection program in this quiet community in Contra Costa County.

Petreas, a research chemist; Marie Kahn, a retired high school English teacher; and fellow
resident Leslie Engler put buckets in stores throughout Moraga and offered to properly dispose of batteries.

On one hand, they collected 1,600 pounds of dead Duracells and expired EverReadies in seven
weeks. On the other, the women discovered they could not lift a five-gallon bucket full of batteries — it weighs 70 pounds.

And, to their great shock, they learned the state law classifying batteries as hazardous waste — and therefore making them off-limits from your household trash bin — also prohibits the transport of more than 125 pounds at one time without a permit.

And that could sound the death knell for their small program.

The only place they know in Contra Costa County that will take their batteries is a household
hazardous waste facility in Martinez, at least a half-hour’s drive away. Since they get regularly four buckets — 280 pounds — yet cannot carry more than 125 pounds at a time, they need to make multiple trips. Every week.

“I don’t know that we can continue, unless we get more volunteers,” Petreas said after lugging two full buckets into the back of her SUV. “As long as you have to go all the way to Martinez, it’s hard. I have to work, so I can only go on a Saturday. How many Saturdays do you have?”

And these disposal issues, say recyclers, residents, community collectors like Petreas and Kahn, are the crux of the problem with the new state law classifying several household items as hazardous waste.

The law went into effect Feb. 9 and makes it illegal to dispose of batteries, fluorescent bulbs, cell phones, computers and various electric gadgets in the waste bin.Instead they must go, like paints and TVs, to designated drop-off centers.

Those, however, are scattered far and wide in the East Bay: one in Contra Costa County, three in Alameda County. With enforcement non-existent, people take the easy route, either stockpiling the stuff at home or just chucking it away.

What’s needed, the program’s volunteers say, is for the municipalities and professional waste
haulers to get involved. Because without them, recycling efforts — even home-grown efforts like the Moraga battery program — will not work.

“If curbside recycling didn’t exist, all that glass would just go into the landfill,” said Jeff LaFrance, who teaches environmental economics and land use management at the University of California at Berkeley and has studied the economics of recycling. He also helps with the Moraga battery program.

“People will be environmentally responsible within limits — as long as it doesn’t inconvenience
their lives,” he added. “But if they have to drive to Martinez, they won’t. It’s just too inconvenient.”

In Hayward, Charles Landmesser sees this on a vastly larger scale. Manager of Pennsylvania-
based AERC Recycling Solutions’ Hayward facility, Landmesser has fielded more queries about
batteries, but has yet to see a big increase in volume going through his plant.

“Batteries are ending up in the garbage — right, left, center and upside down,” he said. “The
reality is it all comes down to cost: What are people willing to pay to have this material properly handled.”

AERC typically gets 40,000 to 50,000 pounds of batteries a month, mostly from big corporations like Sun Microsystems and Albertson’s that have in-house battery collection programs.

The batteries go to two steel mills that blend the batteries into their steel. Since different batteries have different chemical properties, and both companies need specific chemical mixes, every battery gets sorted by hand, Landmesser said.

“The carbon-zinc are probably the most tricky battery — it looks like a AA (so) the only way you can tell is by the weight.”

Worse, there’s little money in battery recycling. The two companies recycling batteries, for now, are on the East Coast, in Buffalo, N.Y., and Atlanta. “So we incur quite a shipping charge,” Landmesser noted.

And that’s just batteries. Last year, Californians consumed 60 million fluorescent light bulbs —
both the long tubes and the newer ones that replace traditional incandescent lights.

All contain mercury, a potent neurotoxin. Yet AERC only recycled 3 million nationwide. The
lighting industry a few years back spent $2 million with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to promote fluorescent bulb recycling.
The nationwide recycling rate barely burped, nudging from 22 percent to 24 percent. “That’s
pretty pathetic,” Landmesser said. The Moraga women, he added, are doing an “absolutely wonderful” job. “The frustration is,” he added, “that we haven’t sent any real, reliable system to doing it. If we just put some teeth into the law, got some inspectors out there, then you would see a result.”

Karen Smith is working on that. Executive Director of the Alameda County Waste Management Authority, she’s also in charge of the county’s household hazardous waste program.

This week she hopes to present suggestions to agency’s directors on how to best work with
community groups and increase recycling efforts, she said.

There’s also a measure before the Legislature to impose a 10-cent recycling fee on select
batteries sold in California — akin to the state bottle recycling fee. It faces an uncertain future, given the quick death last year of an effort forcing manufacturers that sell batteries to also collect spent ones.

Meanwhile in Moraga, Petreas, Kahn and Engler are staggering under the volume moving
through their white plastic buckets.

“The problem, really, is we use so many batteries. I don’t think we’re capturing a fraction of the batteries used in Moraga,” Petreas said. “We don’t want to drop the bucket, so to speak, but we can’t do it ourselves.”

Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer@angnewspapers.com.

Illegal To Toss Them In Trash

Written and Produced by Jennifer Olney
September 7, 2006

Next time you’re about to toss a battery in the trash, think again. Earlier this year, California became the first state in the nation to make it illegal to throw away household batteries. So what do you do with your batteries instead? That’s now a multi-million dollar problem that’s still waiting for a convenient solution.

Californians will use almost 600 million batteries this year and when we’re done with them, we often just toss them in the garbage, and that is against the law. The California Department of Toxic Subtances Control has determined batteries are hazardous waste — too dangerous to be put in a landfill.

Gloria Chan, San Francisco Dept. of Environment: “Toxic substances can chemically react and leach into the ground water, leach into our streams and lakes, and polluting our air.”

The battery industry fought the ruling.

Mark Kohorst, National Electrical Manufacturers Assn.: “There’s no evidence that these batteries provide any hazard to public health or the environment when disposed in landfills.”

But the state does not agree, and in February it became illegal to throw away batteries. We’re talking about common household batteries — the kind you use everyday.

The problem is, what do you do with them if you can’t toss them in the trash?

Marie Kahn, Sustainable Moraga: “There were no public agencies who had any plan in place to collect batteries.”

Marie Kahn lives in Moraga in Contra Costa County. After the new rule went into effect, she and other members of an environmental group volunteered to collect batteries to be recycled. Several stores let them put out collection bins.

Marie Kahn: “We were overwhelmed as of the second day by the quantities we were getting. We had no idea that such a small town used so many batteries.”

To make matters worse, the only place to take the batteries was the Household Hazardous Waste Collection facility in Martinez — a 35-mile roundtrip from Moraga.

Marie Kahn: “We realized that this was no job for amateurs and we began a campaign to try to get a public agency to pick them up.”

The Central Contra Costa Solid Waste Authority has now agreed to take over the battery pick-up at stores next month.

Lois Courchaine, Central Contra Costa Solid Waste Authority: “We’ve set aside $167,000 to manage the batteries for a year.”

The program is similar to one already operating in San Francisco where about a hundred stores now collect batteries. The city picks them up, sorts them and sends them off for recycling.

In Palo Alto, batteries are part of a curbside pick up. Residents just put them in a plastic bag on top of their regular recycling bin. But in most Bay Area communities, your only option is to take your batteries to a household hazardous waste site. The trouble is, most people aren’t doing that.

Lois Courchaine: “Unless a recycling program is convenient, then they are gonna still throw away their batteries. They are tiny little items. It’s really easy to sneak them in.”

Mark Murray, Californians Against Waste: “It is a big problem. We’ve got over 34,000 tons of household batteries — get disposed in California’s trash every year. That’s a lot of hazardous material.”

Mark Murray is with Californians Against Waste. He believes retailers and manufacturers should take responsibility for recycling household batteries, like they already do with rechargeable batteries. But the battery industry says it just doesn’t pay to recycle alkaline batteries.

Mark Kohorst: “The technologies that do exist are very resource intensive, energy intensive, very costly and all of that activity, the transportation, the collection, has environmental consequences.”

Despite battery industry protests, the state says recycling is worth it and many local officials agree. The regulation is not likely to go away.

Gloria Chan: “It’s not always cost effective to do the right thing. But in the long term, for our environment, and for the health of the public, it’s gonna be worth it.”

At this point, there are no battery police who will be checking your trash. The state says it will go after big offenders. But for the most part, officials are simply hoping you will care enough about the environment to make the extra effort to recycle your batteries.

Related links:

Battery Disposal FAQ

Information about where you can recycle batteries in your community:

• Alameda County
• Contra Costa County
• West Contra Costa County
• Central Contra Costa County
• Marin
• Monterey
• Napa
• Sacramento County
• San Francisco County
• San Mateo County
• Santa Clara County
• Santa Cruz County
• Solano

MORAGA: County will use environmentalists’ model when phasing in program to keep illegal items out of landfills

By Katherine Tam
August 28, 2006

There will be more drop-off sites around the county for those used household batteries, thanks to 11 environmentally minded Moraga residents.

Following the Moraga group’s example, the Central Contra Costa Solid Waste Authority plans to open 18 sites in seven cities around the county where batteries can be dropped off for recycling this fall, said Lois Courchaine, program manager. The agency set aside $167,000 to launch the program.

Dumping batteries, fluorescent light bulbs and cell phones in the trash became illegal in February, punishable by thousands of dollars in fines because they release corrosive chemicals and toxic metals.

In Moraga, members of the 11-member environmental group Sustainable Moraga waited for collection bins to surface around town. None did.

So the group grabbed five-gallon paint buckets, attached homemade signs that read “Recycle All Household Batteries Here” and asked Longs Drug stores, Safeway, Moraga Hardware and Orchard Supply Hardware for permission to post them by the door. They distributed flyers and posted notices on local marquees to spread the word.

The response was enormous, and buckets soon overflowed. Rather than throw them away, people began placing batteries on the ground next to the buckets when the containers were full.

Batteries ranged from square ones the size of a fist to tiny button batteries, commonly used in hearing aids.

Volunteers thought they’d empty the buckets once or twice a month, said Marie Kahn, a member of Sustainable Moraga. Instead, they found themselves emptying them every day at some sites, or every two to three days at others.

“We have been collecting, on average, 1,000 pounds a month from this little community,” Kahn said. “We’ve discovered that people will recycle if recycling is easy for them.”

By spring, and with no sign of an agency launching a battery drop-off, Kahn and her colleagues contacted the Central Contra Costa Solid Waste Authority. The agency agreed to take over the program.

The waste authority will partner with retailers to have recycling containers placed at their stores in the fall, Courchaine said. The agency is calling various retailers and does not yet have the stores finalized yet.

Battery recycling has increased since the state law went into effect in February. Central Contra Costa Sanitary District has been fielding 4,000 to 5,000 pounds of batteries a month since February, more than double what they handled before, said Harriette Heibel, a district spokeswoman.

The Moraga volunteers will collect batteries until the solid waste authority takes over. Then they’ll move onto their next venture: biodegradable cloth shopping bags. Volunteers want to sell these locally to promote reuse of resources.

“We hope it’ll get more people to reduce and reuse other things because they become more acutely aware of it,” Kahn said.

Reach Katherine Tam at ktam@cctimes.com.