Recycling Batteries: Why is it important and how to do it in Ukraine?
What to do with waste portable batteries in the office? This is a sore spot for many companies in Ukraine because most of the regional recycling companies do not accept batteries. To resolve this problem, Gamingtec started cooperation with Batteries, Get In! NGO, the only national project aims to collect and safely dispose of batteries.
According to statistics, the European Union recycles 45 percent of waste portable batteries. For comparison, in Ukraine, this number is only 1 percent. That is why we decided to share our experience — how we came to the idea of cooperation with Batteries, Get In! and what happens to the waste batteries we give them away for recycling. We believe, it can be useful for other companies in Ukraine.
Last year, we found shocking information: once in the ground, a single waste battery pollutes 16 square meters by leaking toxic components that make land infertile for the following 50 years. In Gamingtec, we use about 250 portable batteries every year. The idea of how damaging can the consequences of throwing used batteries to a usual garbage bin be urged us to find a solution to this problem. This is how we started our collaboration with Batteries, Get In! Project.
Currently, 102 companies cooperate with Batteries, Get In!, including Adidas, Deloitte, Asus, Toyota and tech companies such as Whaleapp, Softserve, and MacPaw. You may also find Gamingtec among the partners of the project, and we are proud to be a part of this important eco-friendly initiative.
It is interesting that Batteries, Get In! project was started by three volunteers that came from the information technology sector. Being environmental activists, the guys started an eco-friendly initiative in 2013 with an office in Dnipro. The project’s initiative became especially essential after Ukraine’s only battery recycling plant, Argentum in Lviv, was shut down two years ago. That was when Batteries, Get In! started to collaborate with a recycling plant in Romania. Particularly, batteries collected in Gamingtec, will also be sent for recycling abroad.
“Collaboration with Batteries, Get In! is simple and great at the same time: we’ve received a box where we can put all the used batteries in. To be honest, we fell in love with the design of the box because it has a cute cat print on it. All our teammates in Gamingtec are cat lovers, so that was a 100% match,” said Oksana Kuiantseva, PR Manager of Gamingtec.
