SPENT BATTERIES IN THE HOUSEHOLD BIN: AN ESTIMATE OF THE METAL LOAD FROM PORTABLE BATTERIES IN BUKHARA REGION AND A SCHOOL-BASED “ECO-FUND” COLLECTION MODEL

Wall clocks, remote controls, kitchen scales and children’s toys run on small batteries that, once flat, usually end up in ordinary household waste. Uzbekistan still has no facility that recycles household batteries, so this waste goes to landfills and dumps together with everything else. This paper reviews what an AA alkaline battery contains, how its components behave in a landfill and why the released metals matter for soil microorganisms and the food chain. Using official school statistics for Bukhara region (596 schools, 348.4 thousand pupils in 2025/2026) and a consumption rate of two batteries per family per week, we estimate that pupils’ families alone discard about 36.2 million batteries a year, or roughly 850 t. This mass contains about 194 t of manganese, 140 t of zinc anode material, 33 t of potassium hydroxide, 43 kg of lead, 2.2 kg of cadmium and about 140 g of mercury. A cross-check with European per-capita sales gives a similar figure (≈940 t), whereas the national import statistics point to only about 4 t, a gap of more than two orders of magnitude. To close the collection gap at its cheapest point, we propose a school model: a collection box, a weighed class logbook, hand-over to a licensed operator and an “Eco-Fund” that finances school tournaments and prizes.