Up to 78M batteries will be discarded daily by 2025, researchers warn | Hacker News Reader

Up to 78M batteries will be discarded daily by 2025, researchers warn

cordis.europa.eu

43 pointsteleforce68 comments

Hopefully they get around to banning disposable vapes sooner rather than later, the needless waste with those is just ridiculous. All vapes use lithium batteries due to their high current requirements, but the disposable ones simply have no way to recharge the battery.

Not to mention the fire risk, the vape juice usually runs out before the battery fully discharges so they end up being thrown away still partially charged, which makes them more unstable and eager to catch fire if they get damaged during processing.

https://nfcc.org.uk/over-1200-battery-fires-in-bin-lorries-a...

I have thought for a long time that there is an easy solution to the vape battery problem: make vapes without batteries.

I used to have one of these https://a.aliexpress.com/_mKUdIR6 It worked great from a usb power bank or my car lighter. No reason we couldn't design a disposable on a similar principle. It would be a LOT cheaper and remove the worst environmental concern of vaping.

I mean, vape nerds had this figured out years ago with designs that used standardized 18650 or similar cells in bodies that were designed to be user serviceable. We went backwards from there with the shift towards vapes with rechargable but non-replacable batteries, and then to batteries that can't even be recharged.

That's fair. I used the thing I linked during that time period, but for casual vapers disposables have a legitimate place.

I can't keep a whole vape system in the house or I'll use them constantly, but when my friends are smoking cigars, I like having a vape. The battery is the most environmentally detrimental part, but it's also the least necessary, since usb power sources are everywhere.

Disposable vapes use C grade lithium batteries that are otherwise low quality and would have been discarded anyway since they're already mostly used and not good enough to go into any other applications.

Though I'm sure it's much easier to recycle those c grade batteries directly after they are sorted out after production, instead of when they are inside an old vape, inside a container with all the other trash.

I work in battery manufacturing and it's not. The type of cells used in vapes are Lithiun iron phosphate. Once you open the cells up, they're essentially rust. There is some material that can be pulled from them but companies pay to remove them because the cost of extraction is more Than the cost of using fresh materials.

This is the dirty secret regarding lithium cells.

At the very least, using C grade cells in this manner ensures a working product gets used for some application even if it is disposable.

Take solice in the fact that when you throw batteries out in landfill trash that most are picked up by high powered magnets and are separated out for recycling.

Or, if the streets of London are anything to go by - the pavement.

I find it immensely telling that the vast majority of these things (ie. the popular flavoured kinds) are banned in the country that produces them.

From a broader future perspective I try to take into account that there might be a war between the west and east which would cut the west out of a lot of resources which in this specific perspective would be wise to have been accumulated until then.

>but the disposable ones simply have no way to recharge the battery

I've routinely harvested and repurposed the batteries and the usbc ports from many of these due to how easily discarded ones are found. What brands do you find unable to recharge?

It's also the case that vapes are entirely a waste of resources no matter how you cut it. There's no good reason they should exist, and so even the smallest amount of waste is still a negative. Conceptually, this is somewhat similar to spraying insecticide to protect people from Malaria (painful to spray so much poison, but there's a clear benefit) vs. a consumer spraying their back yard so they don't have to experience insects whatsoever. (no real benefit, and just as costly if done at scale)

> It's also the case that vapes are entirely a waste of resources no matter how you cut it. There's no good reason they should exist, and so even the smallest amount of waste is still a negative.

I'm confused - do you think that coffee is also entirely a waste of resources? Pretty clearly, many people like stimulants. And vapes seem like a better, although not harm free, version of cigarettes.

“So they don’t have to experience insects whatsoever”

You don’t live in an area where mosquitoes are a problem, do you? They can get so bad that you simply don’t want to go outside because you’ll have multiple biting you at any given moment. So yes, there is a benefit to consumers spraying for mosquitoes: those consumers can now enjoy their yards! A treatment of Bifenthrin every few months, and the mosquito problem is greatly reduced.

I don’t disagree with the point of your comment, though.

Vapes are proven to be highly effective at getting people to quit smoking. All the lives saved are definitely a good reason for them to exist.

But yeah, disposable vapes are stupid.

> Vapes are proven to be highly effective at getting people to quit smoking.

... Quit smoking cigarettes. It's only replacing one type of litter (cigarette butts) with another (charged batteries plus some contaminated plastics and electronics).

I wonder how many are Zinc Carbon that consumers erroneously buy not realising they are 40-50% the capacity of an alkaline

Yes Zinc Carbon is better to end up in landfill hazardous materials wise, but the amount of carbon dioxide expended in their production must be enormous globally

Shout out to Ikea selling rebadged Eneloops for ~2-3x cheaper than Panasonic

> Shout out to Ikea selling rebadged Eneloops for ~2-3x cheaper than Panasonic

For anyone else looking it’s probably the “LADDA” batteries.

https://www.ikea.com/es/en/cat/batteries-battery-chargers-41...

They have AA and AAA sizes.

The trick is to examine the packaging and see where they were manufactured, if they were made in Japan then you know they are from the Eneloop factory because that's the only AA/AAA manufacturer in Japan, and if they're made anywhere else then they are from some other mystery supplier. I think IKEA dual sources LADDA from Japan and China now so you have to check.

Society should evaluate which devices actually need to run on batteries. It makes me feel odd if i have to replace the batteries in a wall clock that is like half a meter next to a power socket. Wall clocks never get moved around...

Very bad example. Wall clock battery can last a decade. Any isolated power supply will waste much more energy. Also the clock will stop when the power is out.

That may be a bad example, but your analysis seems valuable. Can you think of some easy cases where batteries make sense vs. where they should be avoided?

Sorry if i do not have better examples. I do not like to replace batteries so i didn't buy many devices that would require it.

Not to mention the obvious aesthetic issue of a wire running down your wall. This is big part of wireless everything.

Not only that, but evaluate which things actually need to be """smart""". People literally scream at their super smart electronics because it doesn't flip the light switch which would've taken you 2 seconds by hand and wouldn't have sent thousands of bytes over the internet

Edit: I also agree that a clock is a rather bad example (obviously depends on your clock)

I've seen battery powered shavers that refuse to work while being charged, so instead of having a failure mode that allow it to be used while wired, you have to throw away the whole thing, these should be illegal

That at least sounds like it's plausibly for safety reasons, don't go splashing water around the thing plugged into a live socket.

It's much weirder when Apple makes the same design decision for a mouse.

> That at least sounds like it's plausibly for safety reasons, don't go splashing water around the thing plugged into a live socket.

Do many people even use electric shavers wet? That just seems like a bad idea to me - you want the hairs to be as stiff as possible, and getting them wet does the opposite.

I know some of them are advertised that way, so I guess some people do it. But it just seems weird to me.

Blade based razors make sense to shave wet with - you're typically using some sort of foam to keep the hairs elevated. But I've never heard of anyone using shaving cream with an electric.

No shaver sockets where you live?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets:_Br...

If externalities such as disposal costs are built in the price, it will be easier for people to decide...

You can't hand-wave it as "pricing in externalities". What disposal method should be priced in?

In theory, disposal could add $0.05 to the price of a battery, by making drive to the official Battery Fire, tossing it in, and driving back, all the way to making it cost $50000 whereby someone will drive to your house to get the battery, and then over the course of the next 6 months lovingly disassemble it to remove each component and chemical without producing any waste, or anything in between.

What do?

Or maybe people should consider "Do i want to maintain this for its lifetime" before buying it.

There are so many devices that are made without replaceable batteries its becoming a real problem. I want an electric toothbrush that takes 18650 or similar cells, same with a shaver and just about every other small powered tool we need replaceable batteries as the device lasts longer than the cells do and it makes recycling the cells harder.

We need a standard size and connection layout for smaller devices. Something with built in protection so the end users can be careless with them.

I hope to one day see a few rectangular ones (Like old smart phones) and a few cylindrical (something besides 18650 / 21700).

There was a post on HN a few years back about an MIT researcher making batteries out of more common materials.

Just like packaging, I think more needs to be done to make materials that are easier to recycle with lower amounts of effort and energy.

It's batteries plus the devices they are in. Its maddening to see how many perfectly good devices get thrown out because of dead batteries.

I don’t know anything about economics, so consider this disclaimer, but if it’s a concern that the 78M batteries per day is a problem, then maybe we should tax batteries a lot more now to control for externalities?

If you think that is bad, wait until we need to start decommissioning electric vehicles on scale. I've worked on fossil fuel vehicle EOL for quite a while and a very large amount of recycling happens, there is literally zero waste. Nobody I know wants to do the same for electric vehicles, they are simply too dangerous.

Why would anyone in their right mind discard hundreds/thousands of $ of raw materials in a landfill? In a dead EV, the dead battery is the single most valuable thing for scrap yards to extract. Assuming it is actually dead. Mostly they get a second life in which case they are worth even more.

In any case, EV batteries are already being recycled at pretty high rates.

> Nobody I know wants to do the same for electric vehicles, they are simply too dangerous.

Their loss. Not everybody is that nervous around some simple electronics. Most scrap yard dealers will train up in a hurry as soon as they realize that they have access to a valuable stream of batteries to pass on to re-cyclers who pay good dollars by the kilo. Most clued in owners will actually insist on getting compensated before handing over the valuable wrecked car with batteries included. Worth more than many still functioning old ICE cars.

> I've worked on fossil fuel vehicle EOL for quite a while and a very large amount of recycling happens

If that's the case for relatively worthless things like steel and lead from lead acid batteries, what do you think will happen when scrap yards start processing lithium ion batteries with a way higher kilo price? The obvious of course.

> Nobody I know wants to do the same for electric vehicles, they are simply too dangerous.

Okay? But there are PLENTY of people who are willing to. There are already relatively large EV battery recycling operations up and running. There are already businesses repurposing old EV battery packs for stationary energy storage.

EVs aren't THAT dangerous. You should have safety training to handle their batteries. But relevant safety training is something you need for almost all jobs that are even moderately complex these days. This kind of training is completely routine for all car mechanics in Norway now since 90% of new cars are EVs. I don't see any reason to think car mechanics in other countries are somehow less able to learn these things.

There's no data to indicate that EVs are more dangerous than ICE. There's some risks that are eliminated (gasoline fuel fires, carbon monoxide poisoning) and some new risks (high battery voltage, battery fire). But all-in-all there is no data pointing to more deaths after the share of EVs in Norway hit 90% of car sales (and reaching 20-30% of cars on the road in many areas).

>There are already relatively large EV battery recycling operations up and running. There are already businesses repurposing old EV battery packs for stationary energy storage.

These businesses are nascent, with unproven scale and business models. They might work. We want them to work. But we are a long way from saying "this is happening".

Exactly this. The current process for fossil fuel vehicle decommissioning is a relatively decentralised process. What we're talking about is a significant change to the way things are currently done. It may not be a very positive thing at all, especially as these processing plants will likely be expensive and centralised.

I don't have a number, and probably it's completely unintuitive, but at least as of today I'm more concerned about disposable stuff, like one-use vape devices and that stuff, where also there's like little incentive to recycle.

At least big (EV vehicle) batteries have a bigger value.

Around Europe I'm seeying a bunch of companies testing and selling second hand EV car battery packs that are at 60 to 85% of their capacity. Some can be used to repair a car, some other for projects that aren't that concerned by the energy density per kg of the batteries (stationary deployments, for example at home). And they're real cheap.

The batteries shouldn't be taken apart without proper equipment and processes. Disconnecting them from the vehicle though is not that complicated. I think the decommissioned batteries are going to be sent to specialized facilities while the rest of the vehicles will go through the same recycling process as the ICE cars do now. Most of the battery material is going to recyclable and thus fairly valuable, so there's some economic incentive in there too.

The batteries used in cars sold today in the EU can be recycled by up to 95%, that’s good enough for me.

Older lead acid batteries can be fully recycled, GM and Ford used those in their older EVs

> If you think that is bad, wait until we need to start decommissioning electric vehicles on scale.

There are plans on re-purposing these for grid storage or used-new packs for vehicles, or recycling them to make new batteries. Sadly Google is polluted with weird SEO blogs and other crap, so here's at least one report from a credible source [1].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/29/heres-how-ev-batteries-can-b...

>Nobody I know wants to do the same for electric vehicles, they are simply too dangerous.

No offense but this is just wrong

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/dead-e...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com