By Bruce Karnick

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No one ever wants to deal with a house fire. You can lose so much if one hits your home. Memories, personal belongings, clothes, time away from work and possibly loved ones. If you knew there was one thing you could do to lower your chance for a house fire, you would do it, right?

There is something you can do. Properly dispose of batteries. Nice and simple right? Actually, yes, it is.

Disposing of batteries in your household trash or recycling is dangerous to you, the environment, the drivers of the trash and recycling haulers, the workers at the plants where the trash and recycle end up and it is a waste of resources.

How are they dangerous?

Shorts. Batteries can have a charge left in them and if they short out, it can start a

fire. That can happen in your cart, or in the haulers truck when they compress their load, on the floor of the recovery center, or on the line by the workers. Fires from batteries can and do happen.

Many recycle centers still use people to sort the single sort recycling, and that recycling is put in a truck that compresses the load. During that compression, batteries can break, spilling the contents on recyclable material and that can lead to workers touching the chemicals in the batteries.

Batteries need to be recycled differently and you can do it fairly easily. A small ice cream bucket is usually all a family needs. Simply put tape on the contacts of the battery and put them in the bucket. When the bucket it full, bring it to the Eagan Recycling Zone for safe recycling.