Battery recycling

A partnership between the Karamea Waste Management Group (KWMG), Buller District Council and Smart Environmental Ltd enables everyone living in Buller to recycle their batteries responsibly.

It is simple, just drop them off at your closest Transfer Station:

• Reefton and Westport transfer stations during opening hours
• Karamea Resource Recovery Centre and Disposal Facility during opening hours. 

Martins Mitre10 Westport  independently operates their own battery recycling programme, you can also drop batteries off there during opening hours.

Batteries accepted include:

• AA
• AAA
• C batteries
• Square 9V batteries
• Smart phone batteries
• Watch batteries
• Hearing aid batteries
• Coin-shaped batteries.

Note: Rechargeable batteries, lithium and phone batteries need to have the terminals isolated prior to being dropped off.

There are many reasons why you should recycle batteries in a proper way. Disposing of used batteries in landfill is detrimental to our environment and it also wastes useful resources. Batteries need to be properly handled, hence should not be disposed of in landfill.

The battery chemicals soak into the soil and contaminate groundwater and surface water, also lithium batteries can cause landfill fires.

The battery recycling service is offered through Auckland based recycling company Upcycle. Upcycle specialises in recycling e-waste, batteries, metals and decommissioning assets. After the batteries are collected in the battery bucket supplied by Upcycle, they will be transported to Auckland for recycling.

There are lots of good reasons, so be a responsible kiwi, do the right thing and recycle your batteries!