William Sommerwerck wrote

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.

I don’t having seen how they dispose of full dead ships.

Absolutely ****ing bizarre, like something out of hell.

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.

Presumably they do something more once the fire has gone out.

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.

But very cheap and easy to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automot...tery_recycling

Note the remark about the sometimes-high value of lead-acid batteries.

In short, I think this story is phony-baloney.

I don’t after having seen the doco on how they deal with dead ships.

Nothing like how its done in the west.