The New Year has brought with it new recycling laws and also new crimes that are a result of those laws. Manufacturers of batteries are now being forced to offer free collection for their automotive and industrial customers, and for smaller batteries they must offer free recycling for customers. The idea was to put the responsibility for recycling on the shoulders of those businesses which are profiting from the sales of items which end up polluting the environment. Because of these new laws, which went into effect at the beginning of the year, manufacturers of batteries will now be forced to store large amounts of batteries as they wait to be recycled. One of these battery storage units was robbed recently and police are wondering exactly what the thieves planned to do with all of these batteries.
Police are baffled by a late night raid on a battery storage facility in Cardiff in which thieves were able to steal a large amount of dead car batteries. They were able to get into the facility by chaining a van to the gate and then ripping it off. Police authorities were initially unsure as to why they might have wanted the batteries, which are only worth about one dollar each. Now police theorize that the used batteries were stolen for the battery acid itself, which can be used in the production of crystal methamphetamine. Similar crimes have been committed in America and Canada where thieves stole batteries for this purpose. Even though this area of South Wales has not had a meth problem, there have been increased cases over the last two years.
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