by Breanna Lai, for KUAM News

Guam - If you have an old car battery that needs proper disposing, you're in luck. Don't discard it in the dump where the toxic chemicals can seep into our land and pollute the water - rather drop off your dead or unused batteries at Atkins Kroll in Tamuning during regular office hours.

But if you can't get away from the office, next month AC Delco is starting their fourth round of free car battery recycling at your village mayor's office every Saturday from 8-11am from September through November.

Arnold Sikat is AC Delco's parts and service manager, and tells KUAM News, "What we normally do is every Saturday one of my guys will be standing around in the village mayor's office and people just bring their old batteries, we can go ahead and dispose of it for them."

In addition to the Going Green campaign at the mayor's offices, AC Delco has also set up battery deposits on both military bases, making responsible recycling accessible to the entire community. "It's actually important because the contents of the batteries has acid on it and it has lead on it, so we need to make sure it's properly disposed of. We are very fortunate that AC Delco is disposing it for us for free, what we normally do is we need to accumulate ten pallets of these old batteries and we ship it off to them and they take care of it for us," said Sikat.

Each pallet has about 100 old batteries, bringing the total of a single shipment to just over 1,000 deposited batteries weighing over 42,000 pounds. But despite green efforts such as these, many toxic batteries continue to be treated as trash. Sikat encourages the public to bring their batteries to AC Delco even if it's not AC Delco brand, as every little bit helps.

Once the pallets are full they make the long journey to California, where that branch recycles the toxic lead that would otherwise be polluting our island. Added Siklat, "We'd like to thank the public for always patronizing the AC Delco products and this is our way to give back to them, on making sure that we keep Guam clean."

Just think - something as simple as dropping off an old car battery can help aid the overall health of our island.