I remember the basement of my college dorm had an elaborate recycling area with various trash cans. One is an elongated clear container with a small opening at the top. That’s a trash can specifically for batteries. I never saw it fully charged in the year I lived there, which made me wonder what my classmates were doing with all their old batteries. I thought they were just throwing dead Duracells in the trash, with no regard for the amount of e-waste already in the world.
This morning I was pleased to see the announcement of an upcoming battery recycling program funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The $14 million program, introduced in Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, aims to install more than 1,000 consumer battery collection points at Staples and Battery Plus stores across the United States.
These collection points will serve as drop-off points where people can safely dump consumer technology batteries or devices containing batteries. According to Wired magazine, these devices include rechargeable batteries, cell phones, laptops, vacuum cleaners and smart watches. It specifically states that electric vehicle batteries are not part of the list.
The advisory explains that these devices often contain valuable minerals such as nickel, lithium and graphite, which are often sourced from China. The move aims to reuse these minerals, shift towards clean energy manufacturing and limit imports from China.
Wired’s Emily Mullin explains that battery recycling programs are about more than just reusing their components. This becomes even more necessary when you realize that dumping lithium ions in the trash is not safe anyway. It’s filled with flammable chemicals, like a time bomb waiting to explode.
Interestingly, they also highlight that despite the introduction of battery collection points, recycling them remains a considerable challenge. Extracting precious minerals from these batteries is a difficult task. They even say that “processing these materials may be more expensive than mining fresh materials.” Not only is this task difficult to undertake, it is also unsafe and costly.
