The US-based Responsible Battery Coalition (RBC) and the Canadian Battery Association (CBA) are joining forces in a campaign to “manage used vehicle batteries in an environmentally-responsible manner”.
The initiative will bring together the RBC’s ‘2 Million Battery Challenge’ and CBA’s ‘Battery Stewardship’ programme. Eleven First Nations communities in Canada’s Manitoba province back the move.
CBA executive director Colin McKean said: “Most of the 11 communities signing pledges in Manitoba are among the most challenging, the ones that will require the most help from us.”
Collecting and removing batteries from remote communities such as these is made difficult by the long winter season and poor road access.
“We have a lot of vehicle batteries going into these communities, so we want to do everything we can to help them protect their local environment by properly managing and recycling used lead-acid batteries,” McKean said.
Founded in 2010, the CBA has retrieved and recycled “approximately 2.6 million vehicle batteries in Manitoba” since its inception.
The RBC was established in 2017 “to advance the responsible production, transport, sale, use, reuse, recycling, and resource recovery” of energy storage systems.
First Nations is a term used to describe Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are not Métis or Inuit.
