I live in the United States and I have a non-working Kidde ionization smoke detector. I've read that these smoke detectors should be recycled because they contain some radioactive material. However, the Kidde website states:
IMPORTANT: Alarms and fire extinguishers should not be recycled.
Disposing of an alarm
Typically, alarms may be disposed of in your regular residential trash. Verify with your local municipality regarding disposal ordinances before disposing of an alarm.
When I searched on this topic, I also found conflicting information on the US Postal Service's website. They state that you should mail Kidde smoke detectors to the following address:
1016 Corporate Park Dr.
Mebane, NC 27302
So which source should I believe (USPS or Kidde)? Is there any other third parties that accept Kidde smoke detectors for recycling? Or should I just mail it to this address and hope it gets recycled?
I also noticed a similar question on this site, but they were asking about the environmental impact of throwing radioactive Kidde smoke detectors in the trash and not about where to properly recycle them:
What are the environmental effects of discarding radioactive smoke detectors?
In that question, they claim that local electronics recyclers will take the smoke detectors, but I don't think that mine will. The reason is that these are radioactive and not just plastic and wires to be recycled.