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#77897 25/06/24 10:43 AM
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rogersr Offline OP
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How do other NHS trusts (or just other companies in general) prepare their secondary batteries for recycling? We generate a large volume from all the medical equipment, most of which are lead acid or Li-ion.

Currently at our NHS trust we fully discharge the battery using bulbs/fans and then short the battery using copper tape. It can be quite time consuming, and the pile never seems to lessen or take up less space. However, no one can remember why we discharge them, just that it has always been done that way. Upon researching into the matter, we have been unable to find proof that we should be discharge them.

Please can someone advise on how your trust/company go about preparing batteries for pickup for recycling? Thank you

rogersr #77898 25/06/24 11:36 AM
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Like yourselves we fully discharge all our medical batteries using various bulbs before disposal.

However on one occasion a technician in our workshop put a Li-ion that was not discharged into our battery disposal box. It went on fire but luckily it was whilst someone was in workshop and could deal with it.

Even though it may cause a bit of extra work it is surely a "Must" to discharge before disposal incase of fire.

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rogersr #77901 28/06/24 11:14 AM
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I recently took on this as we are now external and with the limitations on transporting, this became troublesome.

So I have set up an account with a company that deals with all aspects of WEEE waste and disposal.

Correct battery bins etc.

So far so good.

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From the point of view of safety sounds like what you are doing is ideal, even if time consuming. In the NHS you may find a solution closer to home, you may have a look at your wider estates, facilities etc and see what they are doing with theirs, what processes they have and whether they have iso accreditation etc for waste and environment. You may even be surprised that you may find an unrelated department are funded or may help (hopefully)to dispose of these.
when doing a replacement of batteries for an infusion pump batch, 33 which included battery change I found that a local sterile services department had changed their policies to dispose of single use batteries in drills so we combined our efforts here. I can imagine hospital wide, there will be lots of Li-ion batteries going in years to come. Laptops, monitors, phones as well as medical devices so can see it end up being lumped generically into hospital waste, wee, clinnical etc.

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rogersr #77903 29/06/24 10:45 AM
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Here is an Aug 23 guidline for usage and storage but not Particularly disposal :
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-rea...electrical-batteries-for-the-nhs-estate/

I think this link to guidelines may answer original question best:

https://bso.hscni.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/EFA-2017-003.pdf

My trust facilities only seems to part out
1 primary batteries,
2 lead containing secondary (rechargeable),
3 Other secondary batteries technologies are kept together for uplift despite my suggestion to facilities management lithium types are a higher fire risk!

Last edited by jonbe; 29/06/24 10:51 AM.
2 members like this: rogersr, Geoff Hannis

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