“Because there are so many different (wheel weight) materials out in today’s market, it is becoming harder for shops to be able to separate their wheel weights into lead and non-lead containers for recycling return,” says Parker. “A lot of bullet casters will still buy used weights and sort them themselves, but some ‘lead only’ battery recyclers have claimed that they don’t want the mixed media.”

“Where there was only lead, now we have a mixture of metals making it harder for the recycling sites to manage,” says Molinari. “Battery recycling sites are becoming less responsive to receive wheel weights.”

Lead and steel have different melting points. If lead and steel weights are melted together, the lead melts first, and recyclers can skim the steel out of the remelt. “But zinc and lead have fairly similar melting points, so you can’t get the zinc out of the lead batch,” says Keefe. “The only thing you can do is add more lead to the batch to dilute it. That’s a problem for the battery manufacturers because zinc can’t be present in battery lead in any amount really more than 20 parts per million.”

However, Parker says the issue is not zinc versus lead or zinc versus steel. It is lead versus non-lead.

“There just isn’t as much lead in the market any more as there used to be — plain and simple,” he says. “All OEMs are non-lead, most of your major, national tire retailers are non-lead, etc. So, today’s typical shop has five-gallon buckets of used wheel weights sitting by the balancer that are likely half as full of lead as they used to be, with the other half being a mix of steel, zinc, plastics and composite materials.”

Parker believes that it is important for the market to know that lead-only battery recyclers are not the only scrap wheel weight buyers in the market. “Many scrap dealers all over the country are happy to accept mixed-media returns and they do it daily,” says Parker. “These mixed media scrap dealers are able to separate the materials during the recycling process, unlike many lead-only recyclers. At Perfect Equipment, we offer a program to the market that allows for mixed returns at no out-of-pocket expenses. It’s hassle-free.”

“It’s fairly common to find local scrap haulers who are willing to buy (mixed media wheel weights) from you, but you lose traceability,” says Keefe.

“A lot of the industry is concerned about  having traceability from cradle to grave — or cradle to cradle as it tends to work in the wheel weight industry — because those weights come back, they get melted and they end up back in a product whether it’s a battery or a wheel weight.”

Perfect Equipment, Plombco Inc., Hennessy Industries and Wurth USA all offer wheel weight return programs and accept mixed media weights.

“We’ll be taking lead off vehicles for years and years and years,” says Keefe.

“We’re just now starting to see the impact of the lead-free conversions in the wheel weight returns. If it takes another five or 10 years for legislation to flip the switch on the rest of the country, we’ll be taking lead wheel weights off for another 13 to 15 years.”

“It would be a good idea to see (lead wheel weight recycling) through to the end,” says Molinari. “There is lead out there and it’s coming off. We need to ensure we capture what’s left and process it properly through the system.”