Recycling batteries should not be this hard

...at least where I live.

There are barely any places around me where I can drop off my pile of used AA batteries. Some privately-owned locations that offer to recycle electronic waste do not even accept batteries or charge a fee to recycle them. The city I live in also has locations where people can drop off their electronic waste, but taking advantage of these services is difficult. They are often only open on the weekends, they close if the weather is bad, and I have to drive to those locations in my car and wait in a line just to recycle some old AA batteries. There are some drop-off locations, but the nearest one to me is a library that is 25 minutes away. Why does the city not provide an easier way for me to get rid of this trash or open up more locations that are available for more than 12 hours in a week?

Encouraging people to dispose of their household batteries properly is important, but if it too hard for people to do, they will just throw their batteries in the trash because it is simply easier to do. People who shame others for doing that forget one important fact, and this fact is that there are only 24 hours in a day. Eight of them are spent sleeping, another eight hours are probably spent working or studying, an hour is probably spent commuting, and a lot of people have children to take care of, which takes up even more time. It takes 10 seconds to simply dump batteries in the trash can, but it is such a huge hassle to do the right thing. Most people are too busy to bother, and no one is going to get caught since all of the trash gets mixed up anyway.

The point I am trying to make is that if you want people to do something that benefits the environment, such as recycling electronic waste, do not make it so difficult to do. Otherwise, why should people take the time to do it when they are already so busy?