Saturday 4 April 2015

The Benefits Of Recycling Lead

Lead has been used for nearly 5,000 years for everything from water pipes to the batteries that run your vehicle. In fact, batteries make up about 80% of the consumption nowadays. With nearly 100 million car batteries made with lead annually in the United States alone, the need for recycling is imperative.

The good news is that a substantial amount of those lead based batteries do make it to the recycling centers. Unfortunately, many still make it to the landfill, which is detrimental for many reasons. Even at a low percentage not reused, this translates into millions being wasted and affecting our lives in an array of negative ways.

The first of these is the impact on the environment. Sending lead to the trash can have a substantial impact on one’s carbon footprint. Recycling the material can result in less of a draw from ore reserves and can create less of an invasive eco-print than mining for new metal, which means reusing it can result in greater conservation of the earth’s resources. It also reduces the byproducts and waste created from the extraction process.

Cost is another huge benefit of recycling. There is a good chance you will be back in the market for a lead based product, most likely being a battery for your car or other item. It takes a quarter of the effort and energy to get lead back into usable condition than it takes to produce brand new materials. This cuts down on the lead producing company’s bottom line, which translates to a lower cost to the consumer.

Once lead ends up the trash, the chances of making its way back into our lives in an invasive manner increases. It is not being broken down in a controlled manner, which can result in biochemical reactions and the displacement of other metals in the molecules around us. Lead poisoning can result in the ineffective regulating of blood pressure, developmental delays in exposed babies and children, increased chance of anemia, and reduced sperm production, resulting in fertility issues. On-going exposure can diminish a person’s mental faculties and memory.

Recycling lead can be beneficial to the earth, your health and your pocketbook.

For more information on recycling batteries in Carslbad, take a look at this website.

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