A privately-owned Kiwi recycling company has become the first New Zealand business to offer an end-to-end nationwide ‘all waste batteries’ recycling solution encompassing everything from domestic lithium batteries used in households, through to heavier industrial and vehicle batteries that carry Dangerous Goods classifications.
Phoenix Metalman Recycling (Phoenix) founder and CEO, Eldon Reeve, says this represents the first time a complete domestic end-to-end solution for battery recycling has been achieved in New Zealand, to enable the product stewardship of an essential product used prevalently in society.
Phoenix has already prevented more than 100,000kgs of waste batteries from ending up in landfills. Since this programme’s inception, the chemistry mix has evolved into over 20 subtypes of batteries within these main categories: Alkaline, Lithium, Nickel Metal Hydride and Nickel Cadmium.
For easy disposal, the company is creating a network of hundreds of collection points in towns and cities across the country.
“These locations will include popular hardware chains, product manufacturers, schools, community centres and shopping malls. For larger and industrial batteries, we also have our transportation fleet and drop off points at our 19 sites nationwide. Phoenix’s footprint has tripled within two years to deliver nationwide solutions like these,” says Mr Reeve.
Phoenix has invested in ‘sort at source’ technology to produce accurate data about the volumes of renewables recovered. This data will also allow participating partners to report confidently about their own sustainability measures.
