My college dorm’s basement had an elaborate recycling area with various trash cans. One was a slim, long, transparent container with a small opening at the top. It was a dedicated trash can for batteries. I never saw it filled up in the year I lived there, which made me wonder just what my classmates were doing with all their old batteries. I assumed they just tossed their dead Duracells into the trash with little regard for the amount of e-waste already in the world.
This morning, I was very happy to see the announcement of an upcoming battery recycling program funded by the US Department of Energy. This $14 million program, introduced by the Biden Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, aims to install more than 1,000 consumer battery collection points across the US at Staples and Batteries Plus stores.
The collection points will serve as drop-off sites where people can safely dump their consumer tech batteries or devices containing them. According to the Wired article, these devices include rechargeable batteries, cell phones, laptops, vacuums, and smartwatches. It specifically points out that EV batteries are not part of the list.
The announcement explains that these devices typically contain precious minerals like nickel, lithium, and graphite, generally sourced from China. This step aims to reuse those minerals, shift towards clean energy manufacturing, and limit imports from China.
Emily Mullin at Wired explains that the battery recycling plan goes beyond reusing its components. It becomes even more necessary when you realize that dumping lithium-ion in a trash can is far from safe anyway. With all that flammable chemicals inside, it’s like a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.
Interestingly, they also highlight that recycling them will still be a considerable challenge despite introducing battery collection points. It’s a task and a half to extract the precious minerals from these batteries. They go as far as to say that “processing these materials can be more expensive than mining them fresh.” Not only is the task difficult to undertake, but it’s also unsafe and very costly.
