The battery industry is lagging when it comes to recycling its products, with the notable exception of lead-acid batteries. World governments are shifting from deflecting the climate problem, to supporting clean technologies. Now the Observer Research Foundation would like to see us move from battery waste management, to design for reuse. Words are cheap but where’s the action?
Is Waste Management Holding Design for Reuse Back?
The backlog of used batteries will rise sharply, when early electric car and utility-storage batteries reach their end of life. Until then, it seems, many communities are content to store used batteries, or consign them to landfill sites.
This problem centers around lithium-ion batteries, which are notoriously difficult to recycle safely. The few feasible methods are so expensive, that there is often little financial benefit. We have heard that less that 3% of lithium-ion battery materials currently find second lives globally.
This is a great sadness, because it means that vast amounts of lithium, nickel and graphite are figuratively going down the drain. While this may not present a problem to countries with large reserves, less fortunate nations need to move from waste management to design for reuse urgently.
Towards a Circular Plan for Repurposing Spent Batteries
When a battery runs flat it is ‘spent’, as far as that particular device is concerned. This situation triggers three possibilities:
- Find a second use for the battery with another, lower-voltage device.
- Dismantle the battery, recover the materials, find another use for them.
- Scrap the battery, and let it rot away in a landfill site forever more.
The first option is the best one from an environmental perspective. But how do we get to the point where repurposing whole batteries is practical?
First, our industry needs to move away from sourcing lithium from the earth, to finding materials that are more readily available. With that done, the next step should be standardizing battery management systems, so they are more interchangeable.
But finally, we need to find less-expensive ways to break down batteries, which no longer have another purpose. These three steps should reduce the quantity of virgin battery materials we require, and ultimately, lead to more affordable batteries.
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