I know that you can recycle them at my local tip, so you I would guess you can in most places.

our way to beautiful gir. Ruud Orlagh.

I wish my local council would recycle them, last I heard they were ‘considering the possibility’.
I try to remember to take them with me when I go to France, it’s easy to recycle them there. Major supermarkets have collection boxes in their stores.
Why can’t British ones do the same?

This sounds horrible, but I was trying to come up with an obvious way to recycle these and thought… well, they’re heavy little buggers, what do you do with heavy little things? Put a bunch of them in a sock and make a weapon! : D

Also, if they’re colorful (or you want to paint them or something) they would probably make good additions to a set of blocks. I know that my childhood set had many recycled bits (spools of thread & random loose bits from around the house) and batteries could be good castle-building fodder.

It might be dangerous to give them to kids to play with. They no longer contain significant amounts of heavy metals, but the electrolyte is caustic.
If a battery ruptured it could cause a nasty burn and is probably poisonous.

Rechargeble NiCad batteries often turned bad (=0 volt, not just low) when Nickel crystals grew between the electrodes. By giving a short high current jolt these could be burned off and the batteries recharged. NOTE “SHORT” is important here! A high current can make a battery explode!
I’ve used a car battery charger and just touched for 1/10th secound + to +, - to -.

My local civic amenity site take them… i think. I also have a big pot of them at home, if there is anywhere i could take them, that would be good. I live in West Wales.

some branches of dixon’s or curry’s take spent batteries so go into your local one and ask :)

dowley gap tip @ bingley have recycling facilities for all batteries

One theory says that by warming spent batteries for a while under/on a hot water bottle will somehow make them work again…no idea if this works, i’ve never actually tried it.

If you want to take a picture with your digital camera on a cold take the batteries out and warm them up with body heat!!!
Always enough for one more picture.
It’s science - batteries are a chemical reaction. Increase heat = increase rate of reaction = more power!!!!!!

Sainsbury’s were giving away little bags so you could post (freepost) your batteries to be recycled. I pinched a load so am set for a while.. not sure if they’re still doing it.

For people in places without electric mains just being able to run a bright LED can be useful. A battery that has lost voltage to about 1 volt or lower is usually useless. But there is a kind of circuit called a “joule thief” that coaxes out remaining energy in pulses with high enough voltage (~3 volt) to light an LED. I’ve heard that a “dead” battery can run an LED for about 7 nights (with diminishing brightness). I discover now that there are many variants of it when I search with Google.

I came across these guys they are pretty cool but but not sure if they recycle batteries
www.digitalgrowth.co.uk

pfff…maybe we should contact the people produsing batteries…