Decline of cash credited for drop in surgery for children swallowing objects

My county in California has a household hazardous waster disposal drop off. Any resident can drop off old batteries, bulbs, motor oil, anti-freeze, brake fluid, paints thinner, solvents, pesticides, cleaning chemicals, electronic waste, old stuff with mercury and medical sharps to name a few. You don't even have to exit your car. Just place everything in boxes in your car trunk and park at the facility and their staff will take care of it. If you have anything that looks new and usable they leave it in a reuse area for others who want it. Its all funded through a $15 fee on our property taxes. Well worth it for the convenience.

My county is about 35,000 people. There's no pickup for batteries, but they accept them for dropoff on site (along with other recyclables).

I think this is pretty common, probably any landfill with a household hazardous waste program.

> most recycling is a scam anyway that either gets dumped in the regular rubbish or else gets shipped to a third world country

I've never seen this credibly claimed about battery recycling. Curbside plastic recycling sure, but my understanding is that at least lithium ion batteries legitimately have enough value to be worth the effort to really recycle for the companies who do it.

At least where I am in the US, the Goodwill also participates in the state’s E Waste program, so I just have a little box of used batteries that comes with me when I spring clean and inevitably decide to donate something.

> A dedicated bin in front of my house for it? No.

I think all supermarkets here have them these days; anyone who sells batteries is required to provide battery recycling facilities, as far as I know.

Also, bizarrely, my _office_ has them, despite not using anything that I can think of that uses disposable batteries at all.

If you’re using a (presumably plastic?) sharps container, you should be very careful that they’re wrapped in something first; otherwise they are a potential fire hazard.

> For plastic trash, it isn’t recyclable

Most plastic is recyclable these days. Now, whether it gets recycled or not is another question, and will depend on local law and facilities, but it’s mostly recyclable.

In my country every supermarket has a recycling box where you can drop batteries, light bulbs and old small electronics (think hair dryers or keyboards).

I believe this comes from an EU regulation that when electronics reach end-of-life you can give them back to the store that sold them.

I'd love to see the financials of this service, as I assume sometimes people dump things that are working they just don't need. I guess the store also pays the company something so they don't need to deal with recycling themselves. And I guess they just put everything in a shipping container and send it to China.

In Finland any shop that sells small batteries must also offer to recycle them for free.

There is similar rule for bottles/cans with deposits (similar to CRV though values are quite a bit higher, 0.10-0.40€ depending on size/material). If you sell something for which customer needs to pay the deposit for you also need to accept them & pay back the deposit.

I've never tried it but I can almost guarantee any bag placed on top of my trash bin would end up falling off and laying the the nearby grass when the truck tries to tip the bin. For most of the year my truck comes by before dawn. Even if they saw it, I'm sure they wouldn't get out of the truck to properly handle it.

That may be exclusively a Portland thing.

You definitely can't do that in most of the US.

Oh that's not practical at all.

We have battery drop off points every neighbourhood supermarket, which is in every couple of kilometers or so (Europe).

So what you need is... a recycling bin where you put stuff that are awaiting your next trip to the recycling station.

Batteries, light-bulbs, small electronics...

But they can stay in the "dangerous objects that children don't have access to" place, until you take them to the battery recycling.

Yeah, I probably accidentally added that bit myself.

My brother got a popcorn kernel stuck in his ear that required a doctor visit to remove. Kids are dumb

I agree that an observational study cannot prove that the reduction in these cases is due to the rise of cashless payments. The researchers themselves say it is “multifactorial.” However, that has absolutely nothing to do with “sample size.” There is no sampling here.

The relative size of the population of people using cash vs. the population of kids sticking things up their nose also has nothing to do with whether is study is valid.

The study is essentially making an observation and then presenting a hypothesis: in 2012, the use of cash began to decline in the UK, and over the next 10 years, there was a significant decline in the number of cases reported to the NHS where kids had to have a foreign object removed. Given that 75% of cases historically involved coins, the authors make a totally reasonable inference that the decline in the use of cash in the UK over this exact period likely played a big role. They also name several other factors that may have contributed.

Your strong reaction to this study seems disproportionate and misguided. It’s not the most powerful or compelling study, but there’s nothing blatant wrong with it.

The UK has the 21st-highest population of all countries. It's hardly 'tiny'.