Battery Recycling

Waste Collecting Station in a Supermarket in Switzerland

Hello from Zürich in Switzerland where it is still quite cold and spring is only slowly taking command. I want to let you know about the souvenirs I carried with me on my trip from Bali to Switzerland. Because there is no battery recycling plant in Indonesia as far as I know I took the used batteries I had collected with me. It was about 2kg. Quite heavy but they didn't need a lot of space in my baggage.
In Switzerland exist 12000 battery collecting stations in various shops and supermarkets. There is a law which obliges the shops which sell batteries to take them back for free. The recycling costs are included in the price of the batteries. More than 60% of the sold batteries are returned for recycling with increasing tendency. Source of these facts: http://www.littering.ch/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=318
So I took the batteries to the nearest collecting station and deposited them there. Now wondering where they will go next. As I had heard of waste transports from industrialized countries to development countries I wanted to be sure that my batteries were not shipped back to Indonesia or another country or dumped somewhere into the ocean. I was very happy when my research led me to Batrec Industrie AG, a company situated in Switzerland specializing in recycling. All collected batteries in Switzerland go there and are recycled according to the highest quality standards.
For your used batteries I suggest, as long as there is no recycling plant in Bali or Indonesia, to collect them in our group and whenever I travel to Switzerland I will carry them there.