Friends of the Earth has called on the government to extend the scope of a year-long pilot campaign on battery recycling that covers only about 20 per cent of discarded batteries.
The Environmental Protection Department will launch the rechargeable battery recycling programme in March or April. It will collect spent rechargeable batteries, which will be shipped to overseas recycling factories.
But Eric Wong Bun-ngar, the green group's environmental affairs officer, said the government should also include non-rechargeable batteries because they accounted for 80 per cent of the 120 million batteries discarded each year.
'Not many recycling operators in Hong Kong are willing to collect non-rechargeable batteries because they don't contain expensive heavy metals and are less profitable than rechargeable ones,' Mr Wong said.
He said that although some battery makers had reduced the effect their products had on the environment, some sub-standard batteries were available in Hong Kong that contained harmful materials such as mercury and manganese.
'We found some batteries containing 0.025 per cent of mercury; this is 50 times over the European Union's safety level,' he said.