They have the power! Saving lives by saving batteries

Posted Feb 2, 2012 By Jill Hudson

Click to Enlarge
Alan Medcalf of the Brockville Cycles (left) talks with New York assemblywoman Addie Russell (middle) and Brockville mayor David Henderson at the Maritimes Discovery Centre update. In mid January, the Brockville Arts Centre welcomed people from both sides of the St. Lawrence River to listen to the MDC presentation and update.

Doreen Barnes, St. Lawrence EMC

Alan Medcalf of the Brockville Cycles (left) talks with New York assemblywoman Addie Russell (middle) and Brockville mayor David Henderson at the Maritimes Discovery Centre update. In mid January, the Brockville Arts Centre welcomed people from both sides of the St. Lawrence River to listen to the MDC presentation and update.

EMC News - Students at Thousand Islands Secondary School in Brockville have discovered the power to change batteries into health supplements.

Grade 12 TISS students who are members of the school's Humanitarian Educational Leadership Programme (HELP) launched the club's You Have the Power campaign, which wrapped up on Jan. 27.

During a two-week campaign, they collected three tonnes of batteries from local residents. The zinc from the batteries will be converted into nutritional supplements to help sick children in Third World countries who suffer from zinc deficiency - which can result in diarrhea - which can be fatal for small children.

"Two billion people world-wide are not getting enough zinc through their diet and 1.5 million children die from diarrhoea every year," said club president Sara Callaghan, a Grade 12 TISS student who co-leads the initiative with peer Justin Vanderlinden.

Callaghan came up with the name of the campaign when the students were on the subway in Toronto, after attending a humanitarian event which included a battery drive.

"We thought it would be very cool if we can do that at our school," said Callaghan. "I came up with the "You have the Power" campaign. I was sitting on the subway in Toronto. I thought - hey, that's a good name for it. I went over to them and said, "I have a name for our battery drive."

The batteries will be sent to a company called TECK in Mississauga as part of a pilot project involving TISS and only one other school in Canada.

"They are working with a program called Zinc Saves Lives," said Brent Robillard, one of the teachers who help facilitate the HELP group. A thousand other schools applied to be part of the pilot project.

"TECK wanted to see in a community the size of Brockville what would come of all this, how cost-effective this is," explained Robillard. "They are going to transport them afterwards, they are going to pay for everything. Basically they want to see if it's viable - if they can continue doing this. Hopefully after this they'll see that it is relatively successful." The teacher said he hopes this can become an annual event.

"Basically, they are collecting batteries of all sizes - AA, AAA, D's, C's 9V and those big batteries that are inside flashlights, Lithium batteries and cell phone batteries. Right now we probably have about three tonnes collected. Laurier Storage donated use of a storage bin so that we can house them all," said Robilliard. He said D&D Promotions made signs for the campaign for free.

He said the five drop-off areas around Brockville included Canadian Tire, Future Shop, TISS, Metro and Giant Tiger. "We've had to basically empty every night - we have to go around all those places because the bins are full every day."

TECK pays for the batteries to be transported to Mississauga and then out west.

"Eventually, I believe, they'll all be out west because they have several different refineries. It's quite a complicated process," said Robillard. "Basically - what it amounts to - they are melting the batteries down to their various components - there's steel, there's copper, there's zinc - there's all kind of stuff in there. They are able to separate those things and still be able to recycle everything else - sell off the copper."

He said TECK will donate the remaining zinc to existing programs like UNICEF and the World Health Organization.

He said the company will also find a way to properly contain the mercury from the batteries.

Robillard stated that out of all the zinc mined in the world, one per cent of that is enough to solve the problem of zinc deficiency. He said we get the nutrients from the fruit and vegetables we eat.

"When you think about it: the waste zinc that's in the battery - if we were able to recycle them all it would be more than enough to solve that. It's kind of a cool idea," said the teacher. "The environmental spin-off is all the batteries don't end up in the trash can - they end up being recycled."

The teacher said the HELP club has also helped a community in Nicaragua for the last five years - they do work placements there every year for two weeks and locally they have helped at the local food bank.

Robillard said the battery drive makes sense on many levels.

"Performing charity - that's great - what's really interesting here is the potential that this program can be even economically viable. It would make sense from a business standpoint, from a charitable standpoint and it would make sense from an environmental standpoint. That's the kind of program that can be sustainable." The teacher said the company can sell the copper and steel from the batteries. "It's pretty interesting to see how that would all work out."