Do you have a collection of elderly cellphones in your desk drawer because you don’t know what to do with them? A up-to-date US initiative aims to make it easier for people to recycle phones, computers and other battery-powered electronics.
This month, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $14 million program which will fund more than 1,000 consumer battery collection points nationwide at Staples and Battery Plus stores. It’s part of a larger $62 million effort announced by the Biden administration in April to enhance battery recycling.
The average lifespan of a smartphone is only two to three years, which translates into billions of phones thrown away every year which contribute to the alarming global electronic waste problem.
Smartphones should not be disposed of in household waste or recycling bins. They contain lithium-ion batteries that can leak toxic chemicals into the environment or cause hazardous fires if damaged, punctured, or exposed to excessive heat.
And improper battery disposal isn’t just an environmental problem. The Energy Department sees it as an economic problem, too. Many batteries contain lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and manganese — critical materials needed to make neat energy technologies, including wind turbines and electric vehicles. As U.S. electric vehicle sales grow, more of these materials will be needed.
“China has largely dominated the market for processing these materials and, in many cases, mining them,” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told WIRED. “We want to be able to create multiple ways to access these critical materials in the United States, and recycling is one part of that.” She added that U.S. battery recycling capacity was “vastly underutilized.”
When batteries are thrown away, these materials cannot be recovered. When recycled, these resources can be used over and over again—and studies have shown that recycled battery materials can perform just as well as up-to-date ones.
“We don’t want to lose important minerals from the supply chain,” says Martin Bazant, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT who directs the Center for Battery Sustainability, a joint venture between MIT and Northeastern University. “We need to be able to recycle them.”
Bazant says it makes sense for the government to work with retailers that sell consumer electronics and batteries to enhance the recovery of these materials. “These companies are very visible,” he says. But he admits it can be a challenge to get people to see not only the importance of preserving these materials, but also the environmental damage they can do if not disposed of properly.
Even if the collection points are effective, there is still the question of who will recycle the batteries, says Doug Kobold, executive director of the California Product Stewardship Council, which sponsored the battery recycling legislation. The problem is that extracting the critical materials from recycled batteries is complicated and high-priced. In fact, it can be more high-priced to recycle these materials than to extract them fresh. And lithium is particularly hazardous to handle because of its reactive properties. Only about 5 percent of lithium-ion batteries are thought to be recycled, according to the American Chemical Society.
“Every facility that processes them charges a fee,” Kobold says. “We have to find a way to cover the cost of processing.”
California adds a observable fee to some electronics to facilitate fund their recycling. It’s similar to the way states charge a tire recycling fee upfront when you buy a up-to-date set of tires. “Supporting collection networks in other states can still be a challenge because once you take it back, who pays for the recycling?” Kobold says.
Scientists are working on ways to more sustainably and economically recycle lithium-ion batteries, but it could be years before these methods become commercially viable.
James Tour, a Rice University chemist who studies battery recycling methods, says one way the United States could improve its battery recycling ecosystem is to standardize battery designs with up-to-date regulations, which could facilitate streamline processing. “These metals can be recycled infinitely,” he says. “We need better designs that make it easier to get into batteries.”
Batteries, cell phones, laptops, vacuum cleaners and smartwatches are among the items that will be collected at the up-to-date collection points. EV batteries will not be accepted.