Battery maker ABM banks on recycling to face importers

Waste is a source of income, if treated well. This is how across Kenya people are making a living gathering used batteries and selling them to scrap dealers.

Battery-maker Associated Battery Manufacturers, a sister company of Chloride Exide, has stationed collectors in major towns to look for discarded batteries, which are recycled for lead.

ABM smelts the batteries from its Athi River base, where it uses the lead as a raw material for the manufacture of new batteries.

The lead plates are extracted from the plastic casings at the ABM plant for melting, refining and casting into pure lead ingots.

These are transported to the battery factory on Kampala Road.

The plastic casings are washed and broken into pieces and crushed to make plastic pellets.

NAS Plastics uses the pellets as raw materials for the manufacture of new basins, buckets and other plastic products. A small percentage is used in making some types of battery casings again.

Michael Wanjala, the regional recycling co-ordinator of ABM, says “by using scrap batteries to provide raw materials for the manufacture of new ones and plastic products, we are able to compete with imported batteries made at massive factories which benefit from economies of scale.”

“ABM is licensed by the National Environment Management Authority (Nema) to recycle scrap and has ISO 9001 certification.”

He concluded: “We are conscious of protecting the environment. Gathering abandoned batteries helps to reduce the growth of rubbish dumps around the country and avoids lead pollution.”

The ABM official said it was satisfying that through the recycle plan, the battery firm was providing self-mployment to “hundreds of people all over Kenya and revenue for scrap dealers.”