> because doing so the proper way is often onerous
Or badly publicized. The Goodwill around the corner is a designated battery drop-off site. You would never know it without specifically looking that up.
If you could just throw "Battery recycling" into Apple/Google Maps or OpenStreetMap (which has Tag:amenity=recycling and recycling:batteries for the purpose), I think you'd get a lot of these issues resolved. None of these offer reasonable results when I look this up near me.
People know they're supposed to recycle batteries. My old employer had a bin of dead cell phones, laptop batteries, and power tool batteries (and people kept throwing in alkalines); my parents inexplicably had a cardboard box fire hazard for a similar purpose but don't know where to bring them.
One tool that does this is https://www.call2recycle.org/locator/ (they might get would get better coverage in some demographics with "text2recycle" or "websearch2recycle" domains). Why the data isn't in the tools people typically use to find this information, I don't know - it seems to be a political rather than technical problem.
There's a Lowes, Home Depot, Comprenew, Goodwill, and sanitary transfer station that all take these batteries for free with a minimum of fuss, and are all within 5 miles of both of the aforementioned boxes of spicy pillows. But you have to know that to use them.
> If you could just throw "Battery recycling" into Apple/Google Maps or OpenStreetMap (which has Tag:amenity=recycling and recycling:batteries for the purpose), I think you'd get a lot of these issues resolved. None of these offer reasonable results when I look this up near me
Or badly publicized. The Goodwill around the corner is a designated battery drop-off site. You would never know it without specifically looking that up.