A Simcoe County campaign to keep used batteries out of garbage dumps has yielded the best results in the province.
The County held its third curbside battery collection back in November 2017 and 24,000 kg of batteries were collected. That equates to almost one million batteries.
The County did better than other municipalities with significantly more households, like the Region of Peel and the Region of Durham.
According to County officials, the amount collected curbside was almost three and a half times the amount collected at its four hazardous waste facilities.
Despite that, the amount collected at those waste facilities didn’t go down, which leads officials to believe the batteries collected curbside would have otherwise wound up in the garbage, where they can contaminate the air, water and soil. The batteries that were collected were instead recycled.
The battery collection will be back in 2018 and the County of Simcoe will be launching textile and electronics curbside collection later this year.
