Sure.
The reason batteries are exported out of North America is that we keep closing plants. They were originally built in cities back before we knew that lead was hazardous. It was only found to be hazardous in the 1970s, when we found out that it was poisoning playgrounds and schools and things like that. They got closed in developed countries. Then there was no capacity being built anywhere here.
That's how they get recycled. Vancouver gets probably 5% of the scrap batteries from the Lower Mainland, and 95% are exported to Asia. Many are exported legally—to Korea, for example—but many are then re-exported or end up in a country like Bangladesh or in Africa. The United Nations says that 50% of the world's children have toxic levels of lead in their blood as a result of informal battery recycling.