Lead-acid battery recycling
Returning used car batteries so their lead, plastic and acid can be recovered and reused.
Lead-acid battery recycling recovers the lead, plastic case and acid from conventional 12-volt car batteries. Retailers that sell batteries commonly take old ones back, often refunding a core charge, and junkyards remove batteries from incoming cars.
A car battery in a junk car still has value to the buyer. Some sellers pull it and return it for a core refund; ask the buyer first, since some price the car with the battery included.
The EPA estimates that about 99 percent of battery lead was recycled in 2018, and that lead recovered from batteries accounted for the roughly 1.7 million tons of other nonferrous metals recycled from municipal solid waste that year.1
References
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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Other Nonferrous Metals: Material-Specific Data”, https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/nonferrous-metals-material-specific-data ↩