An environmental group from Margarita Island, located in the Caribbean Sea off the northeast coast of Venezuela, has launched a campaign to collect used batteries from the island’s 400,000 inhabitants and the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit every year. The organization, "Somos Margarita Verde" (We Are Green Margarita), is asking people to cover the ends of their used batteries with adhesive tape and deposit them in the five-liter plastic containers that have been set up for their collection.

"When we’ve collected a good amount, we’ll pressure the environmental authorities to take responsibility for them and call on manufacturers and distributors to develop plans for their final disposal," the group’s director, Patricia Chalbaud, told Tierramérica.

"We have legislation on toxic waste, but it isn’t enforced. There are no treatment plants for the final disposal of the millions of used batteries that are thrown away every year and contaminate other solid waste with nickel, cadmium, lead, mercury and lithium," she stressed.