Industry-led voluntary schemes will fail to address the environmental risks arising from battery disposal, according to the Total Environment Centre, as they release a plan for urgent regulation to establish an effective, mandatory product stewardship scheme to safely collect and recycle all battery types in Australia.
‘We need to act now to address the growing fire risks and waste of recyclable resources,’ said TEC Campaigner, Mark Zihrul.
‘With over 200,000 tonnes of batteries reaching end-of-life every year, our plan highlights the failures of the current system and calls on the federal government to implement full industry coverage.
‘We need to prevent some businesses not participating (free-riders) and ensure funding for maximum collection with mandatory recovery and recycling targets. This is the only way batteries can flow through the circular economy safely and efficiently. It includes a ban on landfilling batteries.’
Voluntary schemes failing
The Total Environment Centre says the voluntary industry-led schemes, like Mobilemuster and B-cycle, have dismally low collection rates (~12 per cent), and don’t cover the majority of hazardous batteries on the market, such as those embedded in vapes, e-bikes and EVs.
‘Enforceable regulations are required to ensure all batteries, including lead acid, EV and home storage batteries, are covered by a single scheme, rather than the voluntary, multiple schemes we now have,’ said Mark Zihrul.
‘We were pleased to see the NSW EPA also recently call for action. A state-led approach could push things along,’ he said.
The Australian Council of Recycling has reported fires caused by batteries are now widespread across mixed recycling facilities, in waste and recycling trucks, and in depots.
In May 2023, the CSIRO reported that there was an ‘urgent need to enhance collection rates to capture the embedded value of the materials that remain in a battery at end of life, minimise hazardous waste and fire risks to users and the public associated with incorrect disposal.’
More information on the Total Environment Centre plan is available here.
Personally, I have always thought that Lithium batteries in consumer items are a bigger problem than used EV (Electric Vehicle) batteries. I have 2 EVs, but our family has 3 electric toothbrushes & many, many battery powered items.
Recycling batteries has 2 issues: the possibility of fires from short circuits, the ease of recycling. Recycling small electronic items is difficult (think the electric toothbrush: sealed box that now contains a Li ion battery: Hard to dismantle, & many different plastics & resources contained).
EV batteries, on the other hand are more economical to recycle because they can be repurposed if the battery still has life (eg Tesla repacks the Tesla battery packs, then 2nd lifes them into home power systems battery packs). ´Dead’batteries can be disassembled into the component resources to make new batteries. My EV battery has an 8 year warranty, so I expect a long life from the battery. The local Byron Uber Tesla recently clocked over 700000 Km, & the battery was recently replaced (under warranty at 666,000 Kms?).
My feeling (as a retired tech & ex-Enova Energy coach) is there needs to be a way to easily robot-sort batteries into all the different battery technologies. Hopefully some bright mind will design a tag that all batteries are labelled with (including manufactured goods) so the AI controlled robot can easily sort the batteries.
This seems like those who worried about the poor breeding practices of horses in 1900. As the breeds of horses were becoming less pure, transport and farming were being negatively effected. They were still trying to get strict horse breeding laws in place, as people began driving their first cars and tractors home from the dealership. When our grandkids are our age, they will have to explain to the young people what lithium batteries were, and how worried people were that the Earth would run out of materials. They won’t be able to imagine a time when we only had stuff we found on the surface of the Earth. How did people even survive before the internet?