Do you have a collection of old cell phones in your desk drawer because you don’t know what to do with them? A new US initiative aims to make it easier for people to recycle phones, computers and other battery-operated electronics.
This month, the US Department of Energy announced a $14 million program that will fund more than 1,000 consumer battery collection sites nationwide at Staples and Battery Plus stores. It’s part of a broader $62 million effort. announced by the Biden administration in April to promote battery recycling.
The average lifespan of a smartphone is only two to three years, resulting in Billions of phones thrown away every year which add to the alarming problem of electronic waste in the world.
Smartphones cannot be disposed of in household waste or recycling bins. They contain lithium-ion batteries that can leak toxic chemicals into the environment or cause dangerous fires if damaged, punctured or exposed to excessive heat.
And improper battery disposal isn’t just an environmental problem. The Department of Energy sees it as an economic problem, too. Many rechargeable batteries contain lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and manganese — materials critical to the manufacture of clean energy technologies like wind turbines and electric vehicles. With electric vehicle sales increasing in the United States, more of these materials will be needed.
“China has so far largely monopolized the market for their processing and in many cases their extraction as well,” US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in an interview with WIRED. “We want to be able to create multiple ways to access those critical materials in the United States, and recycling is one component of that.” She added that US battery recycling capacity has been “grossly underutilized.”
When batteries are discarded, these materials cannot be recovered. If recycled, these resources can be used again and again, and research has shown that recycled battery materials can perform just as well as new ones.
“What we don’t want is to lose critical minerals from the supply chain,” says Martin Bazant, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT who directs the Center for Battery Sustainability, a joint effort of MIT and Northeastern University. “We have to be able to recycle them.”
Bazant says it makes sense for the government to work with retailers that sell electronics and batteries to increase the recovery of these materials. “These companies are very visible,” he says. But he acknowledges that it could be a challenge to get people to recognize not only the importance of preserving these materials, but also the environmental damage they can cause if not disposed of properly.
Even if the collection sites are successful, there is still the question of who will process the batteries, says Doug Kobold, executive director of the California Product Stewardship Council, which has sponsored the battery recycling legislation. The problem, he says, is that extracting critical materials from recycled batteries is complex and expensive. In fact, processing these materials can be more expensive than extracting them again. And lithium is especially dangerous 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 this waste has a cost,” Kobold says. “We have to figure out how to finance the cost of processing.”
California applies a visible fee to certain electronic devices to help fund their recycling. It’s similar to how states charge a tire recycling fee upfront when you buy a new set of tires. “Supporting collection networks in other states can be problematic, because once it’s collected, who pays for its processing?” Kobold says.
Scientists are working on ways to recycle lithium-ion batteries more sustainably and cost-effectively, but those methods could take years to become profitable.
James Tour, a chemist at Rice University who studies methods for recycling batteries, says one way the U.S. could improve its battery recycling ecosystem is to standardize battery designs with new regulations, which could help streamline processing. “These metals are infinitely recyclable,” he says. “We need better designs that make batteries easier to access.”
Items to be collected at the new collection points include rechargeable batteries, mobile phones, laptops, vacuum cleaners and smart watches. Batteries from electric vehicles will not be accepted.