The Hidden Cost of Convenience: Battery Waste
Amira Adow I An Aspiring Chemical Engineer
We all hate fires. They destroy homes, devastate forests, and take countless lives. But what if I told you that your own convenience can be a direct cause of them? In the UK, hidden or incorrectly disposed of lithium batteries cause roughly 48% of all recycling plant fires. This is an astonishing amount of damage caused by a cylinder measuring just 10 by 40 mm, all because of our own negligence. In this article, I will be exposing the dangers if we keep our ignorance going.
In our modern society, technology has advanced to insurmountable levels. Every day, we design more new innovative machinery to improve efficiency and speed up mundane tasks. However, to keep this luxury up, we rely on batteries. Batteries provide us with the power to charge phones and our EV’s. As a result of the rise of appliances, a greater demand for batteries to sustain this lifestyle begins. At first glance, to most people it wouldn’t typically seem like an obstacle until you look at countless end-of-life disposal issues that we need to handle thus.
When lithium batteries are crushed, they can cause the item to short-circuit, leading the battery to overheat and, in extreme cases, explode. We see these cases far more often than what is televised. A real world example of this is the recycling facility in Aberdeen, Scotland combusting into flames due to an incorrectly placed lithium battery in 2022. Although no lives were lost, 100 firefighters had to respond to tackle a much too preventable incident, preventing action in actual deadly cases.
Nowadays, lithium batteries are the main element used to supply power, whilst typically in the past we would see the classic Nickel-Cadmium batteries, as they are more compact, energy dense, and have lower toxicity. There's a similar flaw we face with each version; however, this is the supply risk. A sufficient supply is first of all hard to obtain and then comes the challenge of maintaining it. One solution economists have discovered is that a circular economy is crucial to prevent a cycle of environmental crisis. But what is a circular economy and how do we maintain it?
A circular economy is an economic model that eliminates waste and continuous resource depletion by providing a cyclical life journey for our products instead of having to waste them and letting the environment suffer the consequences of prolonged pollution.
One of the lithium superpowers is Chile. In the salt flats of Chile, miners extract lithium through a process called brine extraction. This taxing process relies heavily on substantial water consumption, as wells pump the mineral-rich saltwater to the surface. Indigenous communities that neighbour these areas end up dealing with the depletion of scarce water supplies, harming their agricultural land. This is partly due to corporate greed because, from a capitalist viewpoint, brine extraction is a relatively low-energy-cost process for companies seeking to maximise profits rather than considering the negative externalities.
If we ensure a longer lifespan for these lithium batteries, miners will need to produce less lithium, limiting the amount they extract and helping to protect the local communities that depend on these scarce water supplies.
Humans are by nature ‘lazy’, wired to seek the least energy depleting way of completing a task, so consequently, recycling is no exception. We're generally less inclined to sacrifice our comfort just to make the environment better, so this is where convenience becomes a constraint. This is not directly the consumer's fault, as recycling facilities in the UK are not built in a way that promotes efficient recycling. Instead, there needs to be intervention by local councils in communities to build simple recycling facilities in neighbourhoods that have a battery restricted section as well, which would be monitored by cameras to maintain safety.
In order to propose a change in battery waste for the foreseeable future, I believe the UK should begin implementing education in schools on the immense harm that incorrectly recycling batteries can cause. As Dr. Matthew Diemer, a developmental psychologist, strongly advocated, the youth are “the primary drivers of change”.
From an early age, children play a vital role in promoting change within households by informing people of the simple actions they can take. How can we expect the public to actively recycle batteries if they are not aware of the harm that improper disposal can cause? Finally, the government needs to make an effort to introduce policies and penalties for illegally dumping batteries in order to regulate this behaviour and lower the likelihood of improper disposal.
As time continues, we will continue to invent and innovate the electronics that dominate our market, so naturally, the demand for batteries will exponentially rise. If we, as sustainable individuals, are able to maintain the simple habits and mindsets that encourage our circular economy, the environment will face fewer hardships and the world can thrive.
Amira Adow
Aspiring Chemical Engineer
Sources:
https://www.avdfire.com/the-alarming-rise-of-lithium-battery-related-fires-in-the-uk-2/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032125006446
https://www.mining.com/us-struggles-to-secure-lithium-for-strategic-stockpile/
https://lithiumharvest.com/knowledge/lithium-extraction/lithium-extraction-methods/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34198916
https://www.greenwaysquad.org/Articles/psychology-convenience.html
