The Christmas presents have been unwrapped and if you’re already tired of tripping over all the new toys, don’t worry we feel you! But what happens when toys need new batteries and are you one of the many people throwing away some 600 million batteries every year?

Land down under

In the UK, we throw away enough batteries that laid end to end in a single line would go all the way from London to Sydney, Australia – and back again!

Most of them end up in landfill, but as they contain dangerous chemicals including lead, zinc, lithium and even mercury, these can find themselves entering the environment, polluting the soil and our water supply. Not only can this present hazards to humans, but it is a direct threat to our natural ecosystem and wildlife.

What’s the alternative?

The thing is, when they are used in so many devices and are probably present in every room in the house, what are the alternatives?

If, like most people, you dispose of your single-use batteries in the household rubbish – STOP. You can bring them in to our recycling stations inside our Welcome stores and we will dispose of them safely.

Plus, this year, we’ve also introduced vape recycling centres to our till points – so you can bring those into us as well.

Vape cartridges are just as hazardous as batteries if they are not disposed of correctly.

With the rise in the use of vapes as an alternative to smoking, it is thought around 5 million disposable vapes are thrown away each week once their few-hundred puffs have expired.

Non-profit organisation Material Focus, calculated that around 30 million vapes are purchased each month in the UK which all contain copper wires and lithium batteries, which when disposed of, contain enough lithium to provide batteries for 5,000 electric cars each year.

We “welcome” your disposeables!

As a retailer that is constantly striving to improve its carbon footprint, vape and battery recycling points are right at home in our stores.

It is really important that we all do our bit to protect the environment and help reduce some of the 5 million disposable vales and 600 million batteries going into landfill.

Here’s a picture of what our recycling stations look like and if you don’t find them in your local Welcome store, please do ask a colleague who will happily point you in the right direction – and let’s get the new year off to a cleaner, greener start!