Carlisle-Sunrise Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Event Rescheduled for 16 May 26

Rotary Club of Carlisle – Sunrise in a partnership with Redwood Materials in Carson City, Nevada, will be collecting and recycling lithium-ion batteries and rechargeable devices. Join us on Saturday, 16 May 2026 between 10AM and 4PM at the Army Heritage Education Center Parking Lot (950 Soldiers Dr., Carlisle, PA) and bring your discarded lithium-ion batteries and rechargeable devices including smartphones, tablets, electric toothbrushes, laptops, power tool batteries, lawn equipment batteries, rechargeable vacuum batteries, wireless headphones, and any other lithium-ion battery and help close the loop. 

Climate change is creating a global imperative to electrify everything from our vehicles to our grids. Lithium-ion batteries are at the heart of powering all these solutions and are made up of metals like cobalt, copper, nickel and lithium along with rare earth elements. At the end of a product’s life, every rechargeable lithium-ion battery is an excellent source for making new batteries and sustainable energy products. By responsibly recycling these products and batteries, we keep them out of landfills, reduce the need to mine critical minerals both in the US and abroad, lessen foreign dependence, and help increase the security of our domestic supply chains.  

Smart phones, laptops and electric vehicles all are powered by lithium-ion batteries and Redwood Materials can recover more than 95% of the metals from old, end-of-life products that serves significantly decrease the US' reliance on newly mined materials and overseas supply chains. However, today, few pathways exist to get these old products recycled responsibly resulting in a national recycling rate of about 5%. Redwood Materials is on a mission to collect as many of these old products as possible to sustainably recycle, refine, and remanufacture these batteries here in America. 

Every rechargeable battery is a source for making new, more energy efficient batteries and sustainable products. Recycled batteries are actually more powerful than their new, original source batteries. Consider this, Redwood Materials’ recycling plant is entirely powered by solar energy stored in discarded Li-Ion battery banks, demonstrating a net zero carbon footprint in the pursuit of recycling Li-Ion batteries.

Note that this event is specific to lithium-ion batteries. We cannot accept other e-waste such as power cords, flat-screen TVs, printers, copiers, or circuit boards.  Those items can be recycled at the Cumberland County Recycling Center (1001 Claremont Road, Carlisle, PA 17013)

We can do more.  Our planet needs you.  Come recycle with us!

Visit https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/recycle-with-us/ for more information, including where to find lithium-ion batteries throughout your home. 

Carlisle Sunrise is eager to share lessons learned from planning, organizing, and executing the first-ever-in-Pennsylvania, Rotary collaboration with Redwood Materials, Li-Ion battery recycling project! Carlisle-Sunrise plans to engage with district officers to set up opportunities for interested clubs to learn more and possibly organize similar projects in the future.  In the interim, Carlisle-Sunrise encourages clubs to collect lithium-ion batteries within their communities of influence as an environmentally themed activity either in conjunction with the upcoming Earth Day and/or Rotary’s Day of Service; and then transporting those batteries to Carlisle-Sunrise’s collection point on 16 May between 10 AM and 4 PM at the US Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle.  Just collecting what you can from club members would be a great start to something more.  For more information contact Mark Tillman, Carlisle-Sunrise, mtillman@ida.org

York Club Recommends Recycling

The Rotary Club of York’s Preserve Planet Earth Committee was initiated 35 or more years ago as the “Recycling Committee” to help members understand the state’s new edicts on recycling. We’ve greatly expanded our mission since then, but we have not lost our interest in recycling.

 

We distributed, to the club and other organizations, a list of places in York that accept material that can be recycled and we are working on a list of people and places that will repair stuff.

 

Surely, every club can generate their own list. Google or your local waste management company can provide much information, but the list makes it easier. The picture is of our group collecting plastic waste to take to CRDC, a relatively new industry in York, that converts all plastic into building block material which can be used for and is superior to river sand in concrete and concrete block.

 

—Submitted by Al Sykes, Preserve Planet Earth Committee, Rotary Club of York, PA

 

Benched: Plastic recycling project has Harrisburg Club sitting pretty

The Harrisburg-Keystone Club discovered the plastic recycling program from the President of the Friends of Fort Hunter, Richard Leitzel at one of our meetings. We immediately took the recycling on as a project because of Rotary’s emphasis on environmentalism.

 

We pair our collections with those of Penbrook United Church of Christ, a congregation who was also eager to find a way to recycle plastic. Two benches we earned are in Penbrook, one across from their Borough Hall and the other at their Little Valley summer camp.

 

In January we earned our fourth bench!

 

The benches are sturdy and will not deteriorate as wooden benches do over time.

 

The warehouse workers at the Capital Area Intermediate Unit also collect plastic for us, as well as various friends of members of the Club.

 

What we have all learned from this project is the overwhelming amount of plastic we use in our daily lives and how much of it would end up in a landfill without this program.

 

A plastic recycling project by the Harrisburg Keystone Rotary Club has earned the club four benches like this one placed in the MLK Garden on the Capital Area Greenbelt.

Here is the logistical information about the soft plastic recycling program run by Trex where you can earn a bench for your efforts.

 

Here is the website that outlines the program: https://nextrex.com/view/recyclingchallenge

 

It is for plastic films - so think plastic that you can crumple in your hand such as Ziploc bags, grocery store bags, plastic wrap for cases of water, bread bags, bubble wrap, plastic Amazon mailers, etc.

 

You register at that site and log your plastic drop offs. You simply drop the plastic off in collection bins at Giant, Wegmans, etc. on a regular basis and record your drop offs on the site. The website has a full list of collection centers. You have one year to collect 1,000 pounds of plastic and when you’ve done so Trex ships you a bench which you can assemble and place anywhere you’d like.

 

An organization can earn one bench every 12 months. The benches retail for $350-ish and Trex even lets you pick the color. They ship it free so there is no cost to the club. 

 

We have a club of roughly 25 members (with a few members collecting from coworkers, neighbors, church members, etc.) and it takes us just about a year to collect the 1,000 pounds.

 

We are also fortunate to we have a wonderful business partner (Appalachian Brewing Company) who collects much of their plastic from their operations (e.g. shrink wrap when they receive pallets of brewing supplies) for us as well. They deliver it in bulk once a year to a bulk recycling center and we can record that towards our total since it is being donated. ABC views it as a win/win since not only are they helping keep the plastic out of a landfill they reduce their waste costs by keeping it out of their trash. 

 

We already placed one bench on the Capital Greenbelt at the MLK Memorial Garden and given two to the borough of Penbrook to place in a park. We plan to donate the fourth bench to the Steelton-Highspire Elementary School for their playground. 

 

The plastic needs to be free of food waste with any paper (e.g. mailing labels) removed. Any hard pieces of plastic such as the hard zipper pieces you slide on Ziploc bags need to be removed.

I typically just drop off the plastic when I do my grocery shopping. (They prefer smaller drop-offs so thankfully you can donate as you collect it rather than finding somewhere to store 1,000 pounds of plastic to donate at once.) You need to weigh it (I do so at home on my bathroom scale - weighing myself with and without the plastic and calculating the difference) and take a photo of your drop off to upload when you record it on the web site. (I generally take a photo of the cart loaded with the plastic before I put it in the collection bin or a photo of the donation next to the bin). You record each drop off separately and just have to indicate where you dropped it off at (e.g. Giant in Carlisle), the weight and a photo. 

 

It’s pretty easy since most people collect that type of plastic and take it to the store to recycle already so it’s more a matter of getting them to give it to you or send you the details and photo when they drop it off as part of their regular shopping trip. You can also have multiple people in the organization register so they can record donations. Patty is the only one who records on the website for our club but other members just text me a photo with the weight if they drop some off. 

 

For further information, Patty and Becky shared their email addresses: pattyandjim@hotmail.com and 64beckster@gmail.com.

 

Clubs are invited to email details of their environmental projects to the District’s Environment Committee at Enviro7390@gmail.com.