Recycling waste batteries: enclosing the devil back to the bottle
Cargill Nantong Care Council’s Community Activity
There’s a well-known Arab folktale about a poor fisherman. One day, he went fishing at seaside and caught nothing but a bottle with the seal of Solomon. He opened the bottle and out came a cunning devil who intended to kill him. The fisherman outwitted the devil and locked him back to the bottle. Right, “enclosing the devil back to the bottle”, that’s the slogan for our battery recycling activity.
On the morning of Jan. 13th, around 10 volunteers from Nantong CCC arrived merrily at Hongqiao New Village, the biggest community in Nantong. It was our second stop to have our battery recycling activities, but all of the volunteers who came were new recruits of the CCC. Everyone was curious and full of expectation.
We targeted on the elderly and children for the activity since they had sufficient time at weekends but lacked basic knowledge about handling waste batteries. In order to attract their attention and arouse their interest to come, we prepared washing powder, toilet soaps and stationery as prizes.
After preparations, we were eager to welcome our first “guest”. But at first, our tactics didn’t seem to work. Those uncles and aunts glimpsed us and passed by our booth. So we decided to change our tactics and took initiatives to introduce our activity to them. We told them the harms battery could bring to our environment and life and invited them to bring waste batteries to us. Gradually, many residents gathered around us, reading our posters and asking us a lot of questions about batteries.
An old man has been collecting old batteries for a long time but was at a loss as to how to handle them. Today, he could transfer them to our volunteers. A young father impressed us deeply. He came on site with his daughter who has just been enrolled in a primary school. He encouraged his girl to give us waste batteries and told her a battery would become a devil if people throw it on the ground carelessly.
Indeed, if not handled properly, batteries could become devils. The deleterious material inside the batteries, such as mercury and zinc, would seriously pollute large swaths of water and soil, causing nerve system or bone diseases even cancer. In order to prevent the harms and protect our health, our mission is to “enclose the devil back to the bottle”.
Many thanks to our volunteers and each enthusiastic environmentalist.
Snow Ren GOSK, Nantong