How to deal with waste batteries in developed countries

Waste batteries are not unique to China. Waste batteries are produced around the world. How do they deal with them? In particular, what experiences do the developed countries learn? The reporter interviewed the relevant person and consulted relevant materials.

Waste batteries have a negative impact on the environment (even if it is slight) mainly because it contains mercury. Therefore, developed countries have begun to control the amount of mercury contained in batteries earlier, promote the development of safe battery products that are conducive to environmental protection, and prohibit the production of batteries with a mercury content greater than 0.025% of the battery weight. In the early 1990s, the major developed countries all achieved mercury-free cells (containing less than 0.0001% mercury).

In battery management policies, the policies of developed countries can be summarized into two categories.

The first category is for ordinary dry batteries. The government requires manufacturers to gradually reduce the amount of mercury in the battery and eventually prohibit the addition of mercury to the battery. This requirement is part of the elimination of all mercury-containing products and processes, not just the battery industry. Almost all developed countries now prohibit the addition of mercury to batteries.

The second type of policy is for rechargeable batteries. Through legislation, manufacturers are required to phase out cadmium-containing batteries. At present, nickel-metal hydride batteries and lithium batteries are gradually replacing nickel-cadmium batteries. In some countries, the Electronic Manufacturers Association has carried out the recycling of rechargeable batteries. The effect is also significant. This is mainly because the total consumption of rechargeable batteries is relatively small (compared with ordinary dry batteries), the scope of application is relatively small, it is easy to collect through the old-fashioned way, and the recovery value is higher, so it is easier to collect such waste batteries.

For scrapped ordinary dry batteries, there is no mandatory requirement for centralized collection and disposal in a developed country. The United States, Japan, and the European Union and other regions did not treat ordinary dry cells used by the masses of ordinary people as hazardous wastes, nor did they have the right to collect separate laws for handling ordinary dry cells. At one stage, some battery-industry associations in developed countries and individual cities once organized regular dry battery collection activities. Their countries neither encouraged nor restricted them. At present, there are few activities for separate recycling of ordinary dry batteries in developed countries. Instead, waste batteries are collected and processed separately when they are collected and disposed of.

A Japanese expert who came to China to participate in environmental protection academic activities once told the counterparts of the State Environmental Protection Administration that Fukuoka University in Japan made a series of 15 years of research and showed that mercury-containing batteries can be landfilled with domestic waste. There is no basis for the inference that waste batteries can cause leeches. Japan's blister disease in 1959 was caused by mercury-bearing lead-zinc mines that were mined for nearly 100 years in the upstream and discharged large amounts of mercury-containing wastewater to a river for decades. Mercury is gradually accumulating. The expert also emphasized that waste batteries cannot be objectively harmed, such as mink disease.

With regard to waste battery recycling factories, it is understood that at present, Japan and Switzerland each have a factory that handles waste batteries, and they originally dealt with ordinary waste batteries containing mercury, but now they mainly deal with rechargeable batteries. Due to the small amount of waste batteries, part of the facility's production capacity is idle.

The German practice is to store the collected waste batteries in abandoned mine pits. Before depositing in this way, the selected pits must be subjected to environmental impact assessment and special treatment such as anti-leakage and sealing must be carried out. Experts interviewed suggested that this method can be used to deal with the waste batteries that China has collected.