"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
Car batteries which are allegedly recycled in accordance
with the WEEE directive; end up in a big pile in India,
which is set alight and street urchins (usually barefoot)
shovel the molten lead into wheelbarrows as it runs out
the bottom of the pile.

I find this hard to believe.

A charged lead-acid battery contains plates of both elemental lead and
some
oxidized form of lead. Burning the battery would presumably release only
the
former, a waste of the latter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-acid_battery

A discharged battery contains less elemental lead and more oxidized lead.
Burning it will not reduce the oxidized lead to elemental lead.

Auto batteries have been recycled in the US for decades. The cell
construction of a car battery makes recycling relatively straightforward.
Burning the battery is just plain stupid.


Unfortunately the slum dwellers in India never got around to installing
state of the art metal reclamation plant.