The Ukraine imports almost all its batteries, and they amount to 3,000 tons a year. However less than 1% of these go for recycling as the government tries to deal with more immediately pressing issues. Kyiv Post published a heart-warming story of how three inspired individuals are getting Ukraine battery recycling off the ground.
The Challenges Facing Ukraine Battery Recycling
A spent battery someone buried in the ground can leak toxic chemicals rendering 175 square feet of land infertile for 50 years. However, Ukraine hopes to avoid this by storing thousands of tons of old batteries in warehouses. But many escape to be buried, or dumped in the inland Black Sea which drip-feeds the Aegean Sea.
Three volunteers from Dnipro, a city 300 miles southeast of Kyiv, have founded a project they call ‘Batteries, Get In!’ That’s because they hope to encourage fellow Ukrainians to accumulate, and safely dispose of their spent batteries. Thereafter, their goal is to inspire support for a Ukraine battery recycling project. As Lyuba Kolosovska, cofounder of the project explains, this is a tribute to Volodymyr Goncharenko.
How One Man’s Murder Inspired the Project
Volodymyr Goncharenko was an ecologist who dared step out line and speak out about the quality of Ukraine’s drinking water in August 2012. “The murder of a person who was involved in such an investigation therefore gave me understanding that such serious problems can’t be solved alone,” Kolosovska said.
And so the business-analyst-turned environmentalist and two friends co-founded ‘Batteries, Get In!’ By 2018, they had collected 60 tons of spent batteries at 1,500 drop-off points and stored them in a Dnipro warehouse. However, their journey towards mass Ukraine battery recycling is not proving easy. On November 21, 2019 Kyiv Post reported as follows.
“The level of bureaucracy in the country, the absence of any laws on recycling batteries, and the strong resistance from battery importing companies have made the path thorny for the environmental activists.”
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Preview Image: View of Dnipro in Ukraine
