Recycling and batteries

Last updated: 29 August 2026.

Joseph Schembri, trading as Dickens. Bisazza Street, Sliema, SLM 1640, Malta. VAT number MT10611512. Email info@dickens.com.mt. Telephone +356 2133 3562.

The short version

• Bring us your old batteries. Any brand, any type, any age. Free. You do not have to buy anything.
• When you buy something from us, we will take your old one back free, as long as it does the same job as the thing you are buying.
• There is no time limit. Bring an old item back the week you buy its replacement, or years later; it makes no difference.
• Never put batteries or electricals in your ordinary rubbish. Lithium batteries (the ones in drones, phones and power banks) can catch fire in a bin lorry or at a sorting plant. It happens in Malta.

Batteries: we take them back, no strings

You can hand in used batteries at our counter at Bisazza Street, Sliema, during opening hours: 9:30 to 19:00, every day, closed Sundays and public holidays.

We take them:

• free of charge;
• whether or not you buy anything: you do not need to have bought the battery from us, and you do not need to buy a new one;
• whatever the brand, the chemistry or where it came from;
• at any time: this is a standing offer, not something tied to a purchase or a return window.

Two limits, and they are set by law rather than by us. We take back the kinds of battery we sell: so drone, camera and phone batteries, power banks, and ordinary household cells, but not a car battery. And we take the quantity a household would normally have; if you are clearing out a business, that is a commercial waste job and we will point you to who does it.

A whole broken device is not a battery. If the battery is built in and cannot be taken out, bring us the device and read the next section; it is covered too, just under a different rule.

We do not currently collect batteries when we deliver. Take-back is over the counter only. Bring old batteries in whenever suits you, on their own or alongside anything else you are dropping off.

This is Article 62 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, the EU Batteries Regulation.

Old electricals: the one-for-one offer

When you buy a new electrical item from us, we will take your old one back for free, as long as it is the same kind of thing and did the same job.

A drone for a drone. A phone for a phone. A charger for a charger. It does not have to be the same brand and it does not have to have been bought from us.

How to do it: bring the old item to our counter at Bisazza Street, Sliema, whenever suits you; there is no deadline tied to your purchase. We do not currently collect old items when we deliver, so if you ordered for delivery, the old one comes to us rather than us coming for it.

What we cannot take: anything leaking, badly corroded, or otherwise unsafe for our staff to handle; and anything with its essential parts missing: a drone with no shell, for example. That limit is set by regulation 5(2)(e) of the Maltese WEEE regulations, not by us.

This is regulation 5(2)(b) of the Waste Management (Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Regulations, S.L. 549.89.

No separate recycling charge

We do not add a recycling fee to your bill. Where we owe a fee to our compliance scheme, we cover it ourselves; it is already part of the price you see, which includes VAT and nothing else added at the till.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, Article 74(5).

Why it matters, in one paragraph

Electrical goods and batteries contain metals and chemicals that damage soil, water and health if they end up in landfill, and they contain materials worth recovering, which is the whole point of collecting them separately. Malta is small, its landfill is finite, and almost none of these materials can be replaced once they are buried. Separating them out is genuinely the single most useful thing you can do with an old device.

Lithium batteries are also a fire risk. A damaged or crushed lithium battery can ignite, and once alight it is very hard to put out. Every year they start fires in collection lorries and sorting plants. If a battery in your possession is swollen, punctured, leaking or hot, do not put it in any bin and do not post it. Put it somewhere cool, away from anything that burns, in a non-metal container, and ring us on +356 2133 3562 before bringing it in.

The crossed-out wheeled bin

You will find this symbol on our products, their batteries or their packaging:

♲ (a wheelie bin with a cross through it)

It means: do not put this in your ordinary rubbish. It has to be collected separately.

Where you see Pb or Cd printed under the symbol on a battery, it contains lead or cadmium above the level at which the law requires it to be declared, and it needs to be kept out of general waste all the more.

The battery symbol is Article 13(4) and Annex VI of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, and the Pb and Cd symbols are Article 13(5).

Your part in this

You are not obliged to use our take-back; you can use any public collection point in Malta instead. But you must not put electricals or batteries in your ordinary household waste. That is a legal duty on you as well as on us: Article 64(1) of the Batteries Regulation says end-users "shall discard waste batteries separately from other waste streams, including from mixed municipal waste", and there is a fixed administrative penalty of €100 per battery for disposing of waste batteries in unsorted municipal waste (Waste Management (Waste Batteries) Regulations, S.L. 549.178, regulation 10).

Who handles it after us

We are registered with the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) and enrolled in an authorised compliance scheme. Everything we collect goes to an authorised waste operator for treatment and recycling.

Questions

Email info@dickens.com.mt or ring +356 2133 3562.