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EU Proposing Mandatory Battery Recycling
Ironsides writes "The BBC Reports that the European Union is working on a directive to mandate battery recycling. Among other things, it will ban more than trace amounts of cadmium and mercury and require all batteries to be removeable. If it passes, it will be interesting to see how this affects such devices as MP3 players that generally do not have removeable rechargeable batteries."
Then there will be a seam on the back of iPods where the battery meets the casing and nobody will buy them anymore because they're so ugly!!!!
How very bold of the politicians to remove mercury from batteries now that the packaging on most batteries advertises "Mercury Free!". And getting rid of cadmium is a risky political move now that every device worth it's salt uses Lithium-Ion technology! Bold, bold moves from truly noble men and women.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Will they recycle lemon batteries?
Any battery is removable.
The ______ Agenda
Even though mercury and cadmium is not as commonly used in batteries anymore, some countries in Europe there may still use them to a degree. The batteries I would wonder about are the imports that sell for a fifth of the price of a set of duracels. I kind of wonder what they use, but in any event, it wasn't that long ago that I read about a recall of chinese made crayons that had lead in them. So I don't discount anything.
If nothing else, one the law is in place, it is easy to amend it for future purposes than to draft a new one. The law also probably has something to do with putting in a europe-wide standard for such things as opposed to a hodge-podge of laws.
If there was a convenient way to dispose of "technological waste" such as batteries and computers, then most would not mind.
However, if you have to call around to chase a moving target to turn risky garbage in, most will just dump it in the regular garbage.
The trash pickup company could have a policy whereby tech waste is put in say blue bags by the side of the curb with the rest of the trash one day of the month. A small tax on semi-hazardous tech devices could pay for it. Or perhaps regular bags with a pre-determined message/sign taped to it.
Table-ized A.I.
All that's going to happen is the manufacturers will provide a facility for you to return the device so they can remove the battery. I don't think the bill says batteries have to be user-removable, just removable.
This could potentially affect things like real-time clock chips, though. You'd either have to make the whole chip removable, or use an external battery. "Suicide batteries" in arcade game cartridges could also come under this.
As for banning cadmium - how will cordless power tools go? NiCd still performs better than NiMH or LiIon for high-current applications.
MP3 players will get thrown away by their owners with the battery still inside, it's not like they're going to pay the trash man to open every bag, open the device, and then write up a report to start an investigation on who dumped it. Unless they serialize the batteries and have expensive procedures to track manufacturers that have a low occurance of recycling...hope I don't give them ideas. I'm sure an expensive public information campaign is also in the works with television shots of dead babies covered in batteries.
Future models will likely have a cell-phone like removable battery with a slide/screw off case. Several people will comply to save the babies.
My question: What are they going to do about computer CMOS batteries, and other really embedded batteries. Why stop there, we need to put an end to the electrolyte seepage from large capacitors.
Who uses NiCad anymore anyway? NiMH is all I've seen for some time. Though I'm not a battery expert, I assume NiCad is still used in cheaper devices. The "memory" on those batteries was always horrible, charge it once before it was almost completely dead and that's the new lifetime unless you work to rebuild its capacity.
Chalk this one up to expensive and ineffective legislation to make a news story and do little else.
In the EU, they'd have to eye -this- little pink guy instead:= &q=Duracell+Bunny
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr
( no, not the same company at all - quite heavy competitors in the U.S. actually, though Duracell doesn't use their bunny in the U.S. I think )
If it passes, it will be interesting to see how this affects such devices as MP3 players that generally do not have removeable rechargeable batteries.
If you define interesting as "it will increase the overall price with respect to current units, and the increased amount of government regulation and oversight which will require additional tax funds," then yes, I agree with you, it's quite interesting.
Look, I'm as keen to recycle as the next guy, but since when did government become the solution to all problems? Here's a radical, way-far-out-there idea: if you want the battery industry to change, refuse to purchase devices that are non-recyclable! Nothing stirs an industry quite so quickly -- or so efficiently -- as a consumer revolt. We get greener products, the industry adapts to deliver what we want, and there's no intrusive government leaning over somebody's shoulder telling them what to do. What an elegant solution! It's a pity the knee-jerk reaction these days -- regardless of what continent or island group you're on -- is to scream "Here's a problem! We must demand that government do more to fix it!"
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
if you want the battery industry to change, refuse to purchase devices that are non-recyclable! ... the industry adapts to deliver what we want,
That only changes the problem, without solving it.
Just because "X" buys only recycled paper doesn't me he is going to put the discarded stuff back in the recycling bin.
The public wants recycled goods, but it also doesn't want to be bothered with actually recycling them...
umm lets see the big No nos are Lead : http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/l2347.htm Cadmium : http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/CA/cadmium and the other stuff in the batteries isn't exactly good either lithium goes boom if it gets wet oh and mercury, in the US mercury batteries are BANNED due to the health hazards
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...and require all batteries to be removeable
Well, that part sounds good to me. I think it should be a law regardless of the environmental effect...
If the battery is not removable, you just need a better hammer.
After this, people will chuck their cell phones into the nearest river, even more directly polluting the environment they tried to protect.
I suggest you read Slashdot
For the most part the iPod battery "thing" is people who's batteries died after 18 months. Of which, ALL li-ion batteries carry a shelf-life of 18 months so no fsking wonder they stopped working. Anything else is gravy. There really are not that many batteries outside of the usual 5-10 percentile of batteries that are expected to be bad, but those go in under 6 months and are covered by the Apple warranty anyways. PLUS, PLUS!!! li-ion batteries have a finite amount of charge cycles they can do (300-400 is the average. Maybe Apple put some higher quality ones in, but they won't last forever. For the most part the people bemoaning their iPod's batteries going out on them had it happen after their 12 month warranty ran out that's standard and were just too cheap to pay $60 for a 2 year warranty when they picked up the iPod. That lawsuit was based primarily on the 5-10 percentile of bad iPods which is ALLOT when your selling that many and the crack addict iPoders that end up charging their iPod twice a day.
Also Apple began doing their battery replacement program before the lawsuit was even filed. Plus the batteries had been available through other sources for quite a long time before that. They probably figured the 3rd party market would fill the gap as needed with all the other iPod needs (so they never got prepared to be "servicing" batteries), but apparently people were too stupid to figure it out (it's aparently eaisier to just jump onto class action lawsuit and guarantee prices go up for everyone). You'd probably know that though if you'd owned an iPod, laptop, or anything else that uses li-ion that goes through allot of charge cycles. I'm not defending Apple, but this is just the way it is with li-ion batteries. Apple serviced batteries as they should "in warranty." If people are too cheap to spend $60 protection more on a $300+ purchase it's their own damn fault imo.
And lastly I've gone through 2 iPods within the first year, but they were due to my own abuse. Death by chicken soup baptism and frieing it on a PC with a bad PSU. Shockingly because Apple is so bad about repairs they replaced it both times. I even told the guy about the chicken soup. I fully expected to be buying a new iPod that time.
Sure, just take it down to your local recycling center and they'll take care of it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This allows the end-user to do something most MP3 players do not allow you to do - exchange the old power source for a newer, possibly better one. Not only does this extend the life of the player, but it could very well extend the respect of the player's user, and give a more sustainable profit from a potential long-time customer. Never underestimate the value of interchangable parts, especially when it comes down to the things that seem to matter to people nowdays - guns and music and consoles and other things that are really taken for granted nowdays.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I would wish that the Industry finally comes up with a standardized lithium-Ion Battery. In some form factor which enables it to be put on many types of devices. E.g. some sort of lego-type snap together or slide-on so if you want more capacity you just put more batteries.
Yes, not round cells but square ones. Why do batteries have to be round?
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
You can count on manufacturers to come up with ways to make batteries that are removable as required by new EU laws but not replacable (or at least very expensive to replace) so your mp3/whatever is still guaranteed to be unusable in two years.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
California already passed such a law (http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/WPIE/Batteries/) and requires that all batteries be recycled. While good in theory, this law is hard to enforce unless you dump a couple of pounds of batteries in your garbage. Even then, you can always say it was your neighbor that used your garbage can.
I've been recycling batteries ever since I can remember. Radio Shack stores used to take non-rechargables and then they quit. I switched to Walgreens, which still accepts them.
-Palal
In Germany we had the Batterieverordnung since 1998, and it hasn't had the catastrophic consequences most people in this thread imagine. It just means you can't toss old batteries in the trash (and yes, they do check occasionally) but have to take them back to any store where batteries are sold (not just electronics stores) and dump 'em into the recycling containers conveniently displayed at the entrance of the store. In the case of non-removable batteries you have to turn in your whole device and hand it in at any electronics shop. I really don't see where the problem is with that, and why it should be so much better than the American way of just putting all kinds of garbage in a bag, burying it in a landfill and then forgetting about it until the cancer rates go up.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
The EU directive WEEE (2002/96/EC) is about recycling of electric and electronic waste. In Germany it was implemented as the ElektroG law. So, since 24. march 2006 no electric and electronic devices may be thrown away into normal trash. These devices have to be disposed in a special way and then recycled.
As the disposal has to be free of cost for private households (also free of cost for businesses if the devices were made after august 2005 AFAIR)
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
It cannot be beyond the realms of science to design 5 or so "pocket" style batteries for small devices and perhaps 5 or so "laptop" style batteries for larger devices, ranging in power and dimensions and require all consumer devices to use them. The likes of Intel, Nokia, HP could even have a hand in their specification to ensure they were up to the job just as long as they were standardized.
I can't see any reason whatsoever for the multitude of chargers. It's virtually dictated by the brand rather than the device in that brand. Standardization also means there is no need for the multitude of chargers and docks that every device needs. If the batteries were the same then the chargers could or should be too, meaning less packaging and waste since you could buy the charger separately and use it with many devices.
To tag the idea as stupid shows a complte ignorance about the harmful effects of batteries, specially when disposed in landfills.
Whoever put those tags deserves to live close to a landfill where these batteries would be freeely disposed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Compared to living in Australia, it's tempting because the EU has (my personal top 10 reasons):
Most and Least Livable Countries: UN Human Development Index, 2005
see http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0778562.html
http://www.cancer.org.au/content.cfm?randid=96074
This has actually been done for a *long* time with automotive parts - see Core Charge. Usually you can "break even" on this by returning your old broken part at the same time as you buy the new one.
(Note that partially this exists because "broken" car parts can be easily refurbished and resold, so they really are buying a moderately-defective part back from you. I'm not sure how true that is with computers.)
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
One point in the BBC story caught my eye. Referring to the directive, they say "It also says all batteries must be clearly labelled to show how long they will last, from 2009 onwards."
When I put a pair of AAA pen cell batteries in my remote control they last forever, or at least longer than they do in my noise-cancelling headphones. These, in turn, last longer than in a Minidisc player, and longer still than in an MP3 player, or a torch. How, then, do they propose that batteries should be labelled? Any meaningful measure of longevity (say by expected life at a given current drain) would be incomprehensible to the average person in the street.