LYCOMING COUNTY, Pa. — A battery recycling box sits outside of the Lycoming County Resource Management Services Center landfill on Alexander Drive near Montgomery. The box is for the county's new battery recycling program that just started. Batteries that are tossed in with regular trash can cause a problem.
"From different areas in our recycling, it could be once its bailed up, we see it smoking and there's an issue there and luckily we've been finding it as a near miss," said Lauren Strausser, Lycoming County Recycling Coordinator.
Back in June, county officials reported two fires at the landfill. They blamed both firers on lithium batteries that had been disposed of improperly.
"Once the lithium battery takes off with thermal runaway, it creates its own oxygen, it creates its own conditions, it takes off, it puts off a very toxic gas," said Jason Yorks, Lycoming County Landfill Resource Management Services Director.
"On the battery itself it might have a recycling symbol on it and it's indicating what type of battery material it is, so that's possible, there's not really much education out there about batteries and where they should go and the proper places where they should go," said Strausser.
Batteries that can be dropped off at the recycling box are Lithium, single use, Lithium rechargeable, Nickel Metal Hydride, single use Alkaline batteries, and other kinds.
"Battery-containing units, so any item that the battery cannot come out of, so that's a lot of cordless items, like electric toothbrushes, the cordless vacuum cleaners, we'll be able to take that, and if it can fit into our box, we can take that, we cannot take any vapes, we can't take anything that's an oversized type of item," said Strausser.
Residents can come to the Lycoming County Resource Management Services Center and drop off their batteries in this recycling box. If you can't make it to the battery cycling box, you can drop them off at Lowes or Staples.