The CoBRA Scheme (Community Battery Recycling Alliance) is a volunteer led community collection scheme started by Mark David Hatwood in his small Cornish village. Within 2 years the CoBRA scheme had attracted 58 similar community volunteer locations and helped collect over 35 tonnes of batteries. This multi, national-award winning scheme is now available throughout the UK.
Until the birth of the CoBRA Scheme, each year in the UK we recycled less than 2% of the 45,000 tonnes of batteries we used. The remaining 98% went into landfill. Thankfully an EU directive came into force in the UK in 2010 which states that 25% of all batteries by 2012, and 45% of batteries by 2016, must be collected and recycled. This is a huge task and even with the many more locations currently in place, without your help we could fall short of those targets and face a possible E.U. fine… which is bad for us all.
CoBRA want to do all they can to help reach and even exceed those targets and with community pioneers like yourself, we believe we can achieve this. But we need many more community locations, especially in rural, hard-to-reach places.
Batteries are made from a number of materials including acid, lead, nickel, lithium, cadmium, alkaline, mercury and nickel metal hydride. When batteries are not disposed of properly, the casing can disintegrate and the toxic chemicals can leach into the surrounding environment. The leaking material can contaminate the soil and water and some of the elements can accumulate in wildlife and humans.