Daily Herald opinion: ‘A safety and a resource issue’

Our world is powered by rechargeable lithium batteries.

From cellphones and electronics to children’s toys, they’re in many products that we consider essential.

Many of you are probably reading this editorial on a product powered by a lithium battery. Your paper might have been delivered by a car powered by lithium batteries.

But what do we do with those old cellphones and toys when they’re no longer of use?

As Jake Griffin’s story Sunday detailed, environmental experts and agencies in Illinois are working to make sure we know what do with them, and the answer is fairly simple.

Recycle them.

We’ve been educated to recycle many items — aluminum cans, plastic bottles and paper — that are part of our lives every day. Most communities make it easy for us to make sure those items don’t end up in the landfill. We fill up a bin or box and take it to the curb every week.

But many lithium batteries end up in the landfill because either people don’t know that they can be recycled or don’t know where to take them.

Thankfully, that’s starting to change.

SWALCO, the Solid Waste Agency of Lake County, has a site in Gurnee where people can dispose of recyclable batteries. The group also holds special events throughout the county to keep them out of landfills.

“It’s both a safety issue and a resource issue,” Executive Director Walter Willis said. “These cause fires on almost a daily basis in waste transfer stations or collection centers and they’re not easy to put out. We’re spending a lot of money because of lithium fires. But these are also recyclable and we should be recirculating that material.”

The Gurnee site, and one in Naperville, is one of several across the state where you can drop off batteries right now, but that could all change soon.

Thanks to a $2 million matching grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, Illinois plans to put a recycling location in every county and drop-off locations in every community with more than 10,000 people.

The program will make Illinois a national leader in battery recycling, Illinois Environment Protection Agency acting director James Jennings said.

Eventually, battery manufacturers will take over the program, Jennings said. A law passed last year makes it a requirement for manufacturers to handle collection.

A program like this will hopefully serve as a great example of a partnership between government agencies and private companies to keep harmful materials out of our landfills and help save our environment.