Do not throw a marine battery in household trash
The U.S. EPA’s household-battery page is about used batteries as a waste stream that belongs in recycling, not in a regular dumpster. Lead-acid marine batteries are the same chemistry family as car batteries. Florida counties have retailers and recyclers that take them. We take the old pack when we replace it so it is not left on a dock.
Flooded packs still contain acid
A cracked flooded battery is a spill, not a curiosity. Keep it upright. Caps on. We handle that as part of the visit. AGM and gel are sealed; they still go to a lead recycler, not a landfill. Lithium modules are a different recycling stream. We do not mix those in a lead pallet because the case is the same size.
What we will not promise
A core credit appears only if a recycler actually paid one that day. There is no made-up recycling fee on the quote. If there is no core, the pack still leaves with us for proper handling.
Labels help the recycler
Leave the case labels readable when you can. Chemistry — flooded, AGM, gel, LiFePO4 — is what the receiving dock sorts on. A bag of unmarked modules slows that down.
On lake-country visits
Polk, Orange, and Lake County driveway jobs often have two or three flooded group 31s coming off a bass boat. Those are lead. They ride out in the van, not in the household bin at the end of the lot.
Lithium modules are a separate pile
A LiFePO4 case that looks like a group 31 still is not a lead core. We keep those off the lead pallet. If you have mixed chemistries coming off one boat, we sort them in the driveway. EPA’s household-battery guidance is the reason they leave with us at all: used batteries are a waste stream, not dock decoration.
Sources
If this is the job on your boat, see how we replace batteries at the boat. We come to you — Florida towns and counties.