If you find yourself adding batteries to your grocery list fairly often, you are not alone. Just imagine what would happen if the Tickle Me Elmo were to stop tickling mid play, or the remote control car were to stall out on the dining room floor. It is pretty amazing how many toys take batteries, and how many batteries they take. A large carton of AA’s goes pretty quickly in a household with children. And, when they die, we wonder what to do with them – we know they are filled with chemicals and probably have some very bad environmental effect when sitting around in a landfill. So, what to do? Well, there is good news and bad news. We’ll start with the bad. Right now, there is no formal recycling program for single use (non-rechargeable) batteries. However, there are some reputable online services like Battery Solutions and Big Green Box that will send you a pre-paid box to fill with batteries and other electronics that you then send back to them (they take care of the shipping, labels etc). You can also find local drop off locations on Earth911, a site that provides information about recycling everything from soup to nuts. Just choose what you want to recycle and enter your zip code. If you use rechargeable batteries, you’ll have more options. Battery manufacturers have recently created a formal recycling program called the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation. You can take your rechargeable batteries to any participating retailer and they will make sure they are truly recycled. Some of the participants include Alltel, Batteries Plus, Best Buy, Black & Decker, Cingular Wireless, The Home Depot, Milwaukee Electric Tool, Orchard Supply, Porter Cable Service Center, RadioShack, Remington Product Company, Sears, Staples, Target, US Cellular, Verizon Wireless, and Wal-Mart.

For more information about two of the online collection services visit the following sites:

biggreenbox.com
batteryreycling.com
rbrc.org
earth911.com