East Penn’s Canadian branch receives award

East Penn Canada and Terrapure Environmental recently were honored with an Environment + Energy Leader Award for Project of the Year for their closed-loop, circular-economy approach to lead battery recycling.

The awards recognize companies whose products and services provide energy and environmental benefits or projects that improve environmental or energy management while benefiting the company financially.

East Penn Canada collects batteries and sends them to Terrapure. Terrapure break the batteries down into base components for recycling, then processes and refines the lead to East Penn’s specifications.

The lead is returned to East Penn’s battery manufacturing facility in Berks County, Pa., to be used to manufacture new batteries.

“This approach is a real win-win,” Ross Atkinson, Terrapure senior vice president of battery recycling, said. “It provides East Penn a closed-loop recycling process for their batteries, ensuring a beneficial reuse of a valuable commodity, while also helping preserve a finite natural resource. We’re proud to be recognized for our battery-recycling efforts.”

Terrapure recycles approximately 10 million batteries annually and produces 125,000 metric tons of lead. The process diverts 99 percent of batteries in Canada from landfills.

Terrapure previously received the Environment + Energy Leader Award for its centrifuge technology, its oil-recycling program and its use of biosolids to remediate a mine site.