Can you recycle batteries?
Usually no
Never in the curbside cart. This is the one item on the site where a wrong guess starts fires. Batteries are genuinely recyclable, just somewhere else: retail drop-off for rechargeables, household hazardous waste for the rest. Tape the terminals first.
Follow it down the line
Three different questions hide inside "is this recyclable?", and the answer can change at each step.
The material · Yes
Is the material recyclable?
A battery is a dense parcel of metals that industry actively wants back. EPA's own framing is that batteries can contain mercury, lead, cadmium, nickel and silver, along with cobalt, lithium and graphite, which are classed as critical minerals, and that every effort should be made to recover them. The recovery process is real rather than theoretical: lithium-ion batteries are shredded, and recyclers pull out the anode and cathode materials, sold as a mixed intermediate the trade calls black mass, plus the metal foils. The material case here is stronger than for most things on this site. That is precisely why it is worth being careful about the route, because the wrong route destroys both the material and, occasionally, the building it is in.
Sources: US EPA: used household batteries, US EPA: lithium-ion battery recycling frequently asked questions
The facility · No
Will a sorting facility recover it?
Not merely unsorted. Actively dangerous, and documented at length. EPA compiled 245 fires at 64 waste facilities between 2013 and 2020, caused or likely caused by lithium metal or lithium-ion batteries, across 28 states and all ten EPA regions. The report is careful to say these were the cases that were relatively easy to find and that many more probably exist. Material recovery facilities took the worst of it: some fires destroyed entire facilities, caused millions in damages, injured firefighters, and led facilities to stop collecting batteries at all, which is the outcome where safety and recycling pull against each other. The mechanism is unglamorous. Waste processing crushes and compacts, a crushed cell goes into thermal runaway, and suppressed lithium fires often reignite as neighboring cells catch. Nor is it a solved or shrinking problem. Fire Rover's 2024 study found publicly reported fires at US and Canadian MRFs and transfer stations up 20% year on year to their highest recorded level, and an EPA branch chief's assessment of the reported totals is blunt: it is a massive undercount.
Sources: US EPA: an analysis of lithium-ion battery fires in waste management and recycling, Resource Recycling: a hot topic for recyclers, battery-related fires
Your curbside program · Never
Will your curbside program take it?
There is no split to report and no local exception to look up. EPA's instruction is flat: do not place waste lithium batteries in household trash or in curbside recycling bins, and take them to a battery collection site or a household hazardous waste facility instead. Cuyahoga County says the same about batteries of any kind and explains why in one line, that batteries in recycling are hazardous and dangerous. What varies is not whether you can use the cart but which of the other routes is open to you, and that does depend on chemistry. Rechargeables have a national stewardship program behind them, which is why retail collection boxes exist and are free. Single-use alkalines do not: outside Vermont, Illinois and Washington DC there is no national scheme funding free primary battery recycling, so the route is your county's hazardous waste program or a paid mail-in box. One preparation step applies to all of them, and it is the step that prevents the fire: protect the terminals, either by taping them with clear packing, electrical or duct tape, or by bagging each battery individually.
Sources: US EPA: the importance of sending used lithium-ion batteries to electronics recyclers or hazardous waste facilities, CuyahogaRecycles: batteries, The Battery Network: frequently asked questions
What you need to do
- Tape the terminals or bag each battery separately before storing or transporting any of them
- Keep them out of the curbside cart entirely, whatever the chemistry
- Sort rechargeable from single-use first, because that decides which route is open and whether it is free
- Never crush, puncture or bin a swollen or damaged battery. That is the state the fire reports are about
Where else it can go
Retail collection box
The default for anything rechargeable: phone, laptop, tool and camera batteries. Boxes sit inside hardware and electronics stores, and the program is funded by manufacturers, so dropping them off is free.
Rechargeables only in most stores. Do not assume the same box takes your AAs.
Household hazardous waste
The route that takes everything, including single-use alkalines that no national program covers. Usually a county facility, sometimes a collection event.
Hours are limited and some facilities serve residents only. Worth checking before driving out.
Paid mail-in box
Where no free option covers single-use batteries, you can buy a box, fill it and post it back. Cuyahoga County lists this as the route for its single-use chemistries.
You are paying for the recycling. That is the honest shape of the economics for a battery with little recoverable value.
Common mistakes
- Dropping batteries in the recycling cart because they are 'metal'. This is the single most dangerous wish-cycling error in the bin
- Leaving terminals untaped in a drawer or bag, where a loose battery can short against another
- Assuming the free retail box takes alkalines. In most of the country it takes rechargeables only
- Throwing away a device with a battery sealed inside it, which puts the cell into the same crusher by another door
- Assuming the fire numbers are historical. Reported MRF and transfer station fires hit their highest recorded level in 2024