There is one place in particular people must never leave old batteries, an expert in recycling has revealed. 

Ireland’s recycling rates lag behind most European countries and the country is at risk of heavy fines from the EU. 

On Moncrieff,  WEEE Ireland CEO Leo Donovan said there are huge economic benefits to recycling something that has already been used. 

 “The reason we want to do that is primarily to recover all the metals and parts of that's in the battery, prevent the battery going into landfill and causing contamination,” he said. 

“But safety, I suppose, is also one other particular reason that we don't want people leaving batteries hanging around our house for any length of time.” 

Plenty of people simply tip their old batteries into a bin; however, Mr Donovan pleaded with people not to do this. 

“The risk of putting them into your waste bin is the bin gets crushed, it gets compacted,” he explained. 

“In that process, compacting potentially the battery could get damaged and then it could be terminal runaway and potentially a fire.

“So, that's why a lot of the waste management companies have a message out there to customers, don't bin your batteries.”

Main image: Old used batteries. Picture by: Alamy.com.