A campaign to promote the recycling of used batteries has been launched in Guangdong Province.

About 1,000 special collection boxes will be placed at sites across Guangzhou, the province's capital, said Xie Shichao, deputy director of the department of environment and resource conservation of the Guangdong Provincial Economic and Trade Commission.?

They will be located in residential areas, campuses, shopping malls, parks, and bus and train stations.

"We have at least one designated person for every spot, who will call us to empty the boxes once they are full," said Xie.

It will help ensure the proper disposal of at least 30,000 tons of used batteries each year, according to a source at the commission.

Guangdong Jianhang Battery Group, which is based in Qingyuan in the province, will send all the collected batteries to recycling factories in Hong Kong and South Korea.

"We have a recycling factory under construction, but it is not expected to be finished until the end of next year," said Zhao Mingyuan, an executive of the group.

"The factory will be able to deal with more than 80 percent of the waste batteries in Guangdong."

The initiative has been launched as part of Guangdong Energy Saving Week, which began on Friday.

Residents have praised the plan to set up collection boxes for used batteries.

"Because there were no such kind of boxes in public places before, I had to pile the used batteries in my house," Huang Chunlan, a woman in her 30s, said.

"Now I can take them easily to a box near my house."

Research indicates that deleterious substances contained in a single button cell battery can pollute 600 cubic metres of water and a deteriorated D-sized battery may render 1 square kilometre of soil useless.

Heavy metals leaked from discarded batteries on the land contaminate not only the soil but underground water supplies as well.

Each year more than 70 billion button cell batteries alone are consumed in China, with a total weight exceeding 1.4 million tons. However, less than 2 percent of them are recycled. The rest are typically discarded like any other rubbish.

If all of the estimated 200,000 tons of general batteries annually disposed of in Guangdong could be recycled, they could be turned into 100,000 tons of lead, 23,000 tons of zinc, and 1,000 tons of nickel, with a total value of 1.5 billion yuan (US$180 million), said Chen Hongyu, dean of the environment department at South China Normal University.

Battery producers and consumers need to share the responsibility of retrieving and recycling waste batteries, he said.

A range of other initiatives and events are planned to promote environmental protection and recycling as part of Guangdong Energy Saving Week.

(China Daily June 12, 2006)