Attending the April 4 recycling program, third in the Bethesda
Goes Green! series on the environment sponsored by Friends of
the Bethesda Library, I learned something surprising about
recycling batteries in Montgomery County that, frankly, relieved
my guilt. It’s ok to pitch regular household batteries (AA, AAA,
C, D, and 9-volt) in the trash, which I was doing discretely,
hoping no one would notice and call me on doing a bad thing. If
you don’t believe me, go to the source: the county webpage
titled “Batteries: Hazardous Waste or Not?” explains that
“alkaline and heavy-duty (zinc carbon) batteries . . . found in
general household use can be safely disposed of in the regular
trash if they were purchased after mid-1996″ when manufacturers
stopped using mercury as an ingrediant. So, what we learned from
Saskia Mooney, a regulatory analyst with Wiley Rein, speaking on
behalf of the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC),
is that we need to recycle worn out rechargeable batteries
commonly used for cell