Simplifying battery recycling

A partnership between Staples and information technology and electronics asset disposition provider ERI, headquartered in Fresno, California, is providing free battery recycling at the retailer’s stores nationwide.

Representatives from ERI and Staples, as well as Call2Recycle and Energizer, which also are involved in the initiative, spoke about the program during the Recycling Today Media Group’s Battery and Critical Metals Recycling Conference (BCMRC) this June in Atlanta in the session titled Inside an Industry Partnership.

Power in partnership

Staples and ERI first partnered in 2009 and have recycled more than 165 million pounds of technology since, said Brian Coupland, Staples senior vice president of merchandising.

The program the companies announced in April broadens Staples’ existing recycling services program with ERI to include rechargeable and single-use alkaline batteries. With the program’s launch, consumers can recycle batteries and other items for free at any of Staples’ roughly 1,000 retail locations nationwide.

Atlanta-based Call2Recycle‘s role involves working with Staples to ensure safe and efficient transportation of collected batteries and electronics to ERI’s recycling facilities in Fresno; Goodyear, Arizona; Plainfield, Indiana; Holliston, Massachusetts; Lincoln Park, New Jersey; Badin, North Carolina; Flower Mound, Texas; and Sumner, Washington.

“We’re proud to partner with two of the nation’s leading organizations in battery and electronics recycling to develop innovative experiences that are better for our world,” Coupland said when the program was launched in April.

He told those in attendance at the BCMRC the program underscores the importance of partnership. “This is not an independent project,” he said.

Call2Recycle President and CEO Leo Raudys also talked of the importance of collaboration, saying it is vital to everything that organization does.

“We’re experts in battery chemistry and handling, logistics, education, the regulatory landscape, but everything we do is through collaboration and partnerships,” he said. “That’s core to what we do. What’s really, really heartening to see is that the industry is increasingly moving that direction as well.”

Staples’ battery recycling program, designed with Call2Recycle and ERI, will help to reduce the 3 million batteries entering landfills annually, according to the company.

Lauren Bruning, global head of sustainability at St. Louis-based Energizer, said that while the battery manufacturer has long partnered with Call2Recycle on consumer education regarding battery recycling and safely transporting collected batteries, working on the Staples program was a chance to “bring it all together” for consumers.

“[It was an opportunity to] make it really easy for the consumer to understand how, when, why [and] where—know it’s a reliable place to recycle,” she said of the Staples program. “For us, this partnership has really been monumental for our entire program.”

She said Energizer had been working on sustainability for a long time before it decided five years ago to be more targeted in that area by setting three goals pertaining to greenhouse gas emissions, packaging and responsible products, noting the last area is where this partnership comes into play.

“In the area of responsible products, we really wanted to understand that full impact of the battery, so we did a life cycle assessment last year,” Bruning said, which identified the areas where Energizer could improve over the entire life cycle of its batteries, from mining the raw materials to end-of-life disposal.

In addition to recycling and using recycled content (22 percent of the material used in its rechargeable batteries is recycled), Energizer has worked to delay the end of life for its batteries by extending the life of its products to make what Bruning said is “the best, longest-lasting, quality product.”

“In Europe, we already have really good engagement from consumers,” she said, but that is not the case in the U.S.

Taking on difficult material streams

In his role at Staples, Coupland has been focusing on recycling products that are difficult or not as common to recycle, including batteries and electronics as well as printer ink cartridges, markers, crayons and cellphone cases, for example.

He said in rechargeable and alkaline batteries, Staples saw an opportunity to address material streams that present challenges to collect effectively.

Staples partnered with MIT to study consumer behavior around these devices and realized consumers quickly found themselves at a crossroads the moment a battery stopped working in a smoke detector or remote control, for instance.

“The good news is most people at that point had the best intentions,” he said, as consumers recognized it was “a bad thing” to put the battery in the landfill. That led them to store the battery in a kitchen drawer until their communities hosted collection events.

“But, a lot of times, they didn’t know where to go … and that became a problem,” Coupland added.

Staples’ work with MIT revealed the friction points impeding consumers’ initial desire to recycle batteries.

With its program, Staples is seeking to remove those friction points by leveraging its reverse logistics and 1,000 points of distribution.

“We have to rely on the experts here on the stage with me in order to make all of that to happen and communicate that to the customer,” Coupland said.

Looking beyond rechargeable batteries

Call2Recycle recognized the need for recycling battery chemistries of all types, noting its influence on ease of recycling.

“We’ve been around for 30 years,” Raudys said. “Most of our history, we’ve been engaged in rechargeable battery recycling. A handful of years ago, we started collecting single-use batteries, alkaline batteries, lithium primary batteries; we work with Staples and others to do that type of work.

“We try to tell people, recycle this but not that, [and] it just generally doesn’t happen. When we started collecting primary batteries in Vermont a few years ago, we saw rechargeable recycling go way up because there’s sort of this pull-on effect.”

Raudys added that Call2Recycle saw that legislation would be coming in states to require recycling of all battery types. By 2027, 61 million people will be required to recycle all batteries under new state laws, with other legislation pending that could bring that figure to 120.9 million people, or a third of the U.S.

Transportation of end-of-life batteries is a key concern, he said, and one of the main ways the organization is supporting Staples’ effort.

“We have to be able to innovate,” Raudys said. “We have to figure out the transportation challenges. We can’t keep doing what we have always done, which is our traditional box program. It’s not going to scale.”

That’s when Raudys called John Shegerian, co-founder, chairman and CEO of ERI, to tell him about a new solution Call2Recycle developed that uses fire-suppressing material and enables the collection of all battery types to ask him for help on the presorting work.

That call then led to conversations with Staples.

“And here we are today, and we’re actually rolling that solution out at scale at retail,” Raudys said. “It’s truly pretty groundbreaking, and it’s the way we’re actually looking to do this everywhere in our program.”

In the Staples program, Call2Recycle’s traditional battery boxes have been replaced by a drum with glass beads in it, which Raudys said eliminates the need to bag and tape the batteries’ terminals. “If you get a fire, it all is contained within that drum,” he added.

Policymaking and regulation on battery disposal are driven more by safety than by the environmental aspect, he continued. “As far as the social imperative, everything we do is meant to manage the safety component because one loss of life is one too many.

“Our mission is to increase battery collection for recycling. Anytime you have issues, incidents, fires, etc., it works against that. So, we’re always trying to make sure that anybody who’s trying to get into the collection game is … [doing] it safely because if you don’t, it’s going to basically harm the overall system, and it’s going to just create problems for everybody.”

Kevin Dillon, co-founder and chief marketing officer of ERI, said when the company was established two decades ago, the focus was on cathode ray tube monitors and TVs.

“Now, what we’ve seen over the last, I would say, five years specifically, is a need for battery recycling,” he said.

That change of focus means the company went from processing approximately 2,000 pounds of batteries per year 20 years ago to 14 million pounds in 2023.

“We see that number just exponentially growing,” Dillon said. “This year, we predict to recycle around 25 million pounds of batteries.”

RELATED: ERI opens alkaline battery recycling plant

ERI is investing in its battery recycling capabilities as a result, with Shegerian saying the company is installing a closed-loop alkaline battery recycling system in its Indiana facility. “We are now working on No. 2 and No. 3 and where we’re going to place them,” he added.

Early results

Staples is offering battery recycling free to consumers and rewarding them for it in addition to deepening its connection with its customers.

“They become more loyal,” Coupland said of customers who begin to recycle through the retailer. “Their trip frequency increases, their spend per trip increases.”

The company originally piloted the program in San Diego, with results he said exceeded expectations. “We thought we had the appropriate infrastructure and size; we had to go back and redesign [the program] because it was a much bigger impact and much bigger groundswell from the customer than we had thought, which is always a great thing,” he said.

Staples’ battery recycling program increased its recycling rates from less than 50 batteries per week to thousands per week at each store during its testing phase. It includes an at-home battery recycling box that contains instructions for how consumers can safely store their used/old batteries. When the box is full, a customer can bring it to a Staples store for recycling.

“I would say the response, both externally as well as internally, has been just tremendous,” Coupland said, noting that the 300 at-home collection boxes each store received were gone quickly, and another production run was needed. “It’s clearly the right thing to do for consumers and right to the environment.”

Bruning is excited about what participating in the Staples battery recycling program does for Energizer’s Scope 3 and overall greenhouse gas emissions.

“As we continue to get that data, as we continue to bring that in, we’re so excited to see how we can make that impact on the environment,” she said. “Not just in the EU, where we’re doing a good job, but let’s grow this globally and really tackle the U.S. as well.”

The author is editorial director of the Recycling Today Media Group and can be reached at dtoto@gie.net.