Discounters negative on battery recyclingPoundland, Aldi and Lidl fail to meet EU regs
01 May 2010
MP3 players are very power hungry, so get one with a rechargeable battery
It claims to be ‘famous for batteries’, but an investigation by Which? has found Poundland isn’t complying with EU laws on battery recycling.
Budget supermarkets Aldi and Lidl also fell foul of the regulations, which are supposed to stop old batteries ending up in landfill and leaking harmful chemicals into the soil.
Slow to comply
Since the beginning of February, shops selling more than 32kg of batteries a year (equivalent to one four-pack of 'AA' size batteries a day) have been required to provide containers to collect customers’ old batteries for recycling.
But in late March, Which? visited three branches each of major stores, and no containers were found at the three discounters.
Customers steal bins
Aldi said customers had ‘removed containers’ in a number of stores and they had been re-ordered. Poundland and Lidl said they were in the process of delivering bins to their stores when the research took place.
Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Tesco and Morrisons had containers at all three stores visited – but some could have been more prominent.
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