A new program in Cincinnati is helping people take out the trash safely and prevent fires. Old electronics can be dropped off at the Cincinnati Recycling and Reuse Hub. The center has even partnered with local fire stations to make doing so even more convenient. Dropping off old devices at one of their designated locations is completely free, as part of an effort to extinguish the risk of battery fires.
“People want to do good for the most part, but when they don’t know what else to do with it, they throw it away. Some of it is just not necessarily knowing the details,” said Collen McSwiggin, Cincinnati Recycling and Reuse Hub’s executive director. McSwiggin says there are more items with lithium than people realize. A birthday card even caught fire recently. “Somebody probably thought, ‘This is just a cardboard paper birthday card. We’ll recycle that,’ without thinking, ‘Hey, there had to be a battery in there to actually make the sound happen,’ and then, when that got crushed in the equipment, it caused fire,” McSwiggin said.
The Recycling and Reuse Hub’s battery collection sites greatly help out Rumpke Waste and Recycling as well as firefighters. Four fire departments are participating in the pilot program. Once batteries are dropped off, the are sorted into “damaged” or “undamaged.”