As we move entirely into a world where it seems everything is electric, recycling batteries and devices has never been more important.
While they make our lives a lot easier, batteries also continue to put communities and our environment at risk by being put in household rubbish or recycling – just look at the news about more recent battery fires in recycling centres and rubbish trucks.
Batteries are typically made with lithium-ion and that burns as a chemical fire, not a combustion fire of the kind we’re used to. Depriving battery fires of oxygen doesn’t work because they’re burning the chemical fuel supply they’ve got – the lithium in each battery.
That makes battery fires very hard to put out with conventional means. Water and foam don’t make a dent in it and most battery fires are only extinguished when the lithium finally runs out of energy.
Keeping batteries out of trucks and landfill is vitally important, and the same goes for all those other elements inside all the devices we use. That’s why the telecommunications industry runs RE:MOBILE, a recycling scheme where you can drop off your phones and their accessories and we can make sure they don’t go into landfill.
RE:MOBILE has more than 480 locations around the country where you can drop off your unwanted mobile devices and we make sure it’s all processed safely and effectively. Phones that are still workable may be refurbished and re-sold, but those that are damaged or no longer useful are broken down into components, with over 95% of components able to be repurposed, inlcuding the plastic cases and of course, the batteries.
You can drop off your devices at any of the mobile phone provider stores, at a number of Resene Paints and Noel Leeming/Warehouse stores as well, or you can pop in to the Sustainable Coastlines space in Auckland and drop them off to our charity partner in person. For every phone recycled with RE:MOBILE, money is donated to Sustainable Coastlines helping to enable their work to protect New Zealand’s coastlines and waterways.
And each year we see more and more New Zealanders doing just that. In 2024 we recycled 62,890 mobile devices, diverting 4,755kg of waste from landfills. In total since the scheme began we’ve diverted more than 800,000 phones from landfill, and that’s a tremendous result.
Looking to the future, we are working with the Ministry for the Environment to develop an enhanced product stewardship scheme that will ensure we see even fewer devices going to the dump and reduced the risk for those involved.
You can find out more about RE:MOBILE, including the location of your nearest drop-off point, on our website: www.remobile.org.nz
