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The Explosive Problem With Recycling Phones, Tablets and Other Gadgets: They Literally Catch Fire. (washingtonpost.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

What happens to gadgets when you're done with them? Too often, they explode. From a report: Around the world, garbage trucks and recycling centers are going up in flames. The root of the problem: volatile lithium-ion batteries sealed inside our favorite electronics from Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and more. They're not only dangerous but also difficult to take apart -- making e-waste less profitable, and contributing to a growing recycling crisis. These days, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are in smartphones, tablets, laptops, ear buds, toys, power tools, scooters, hoverboards and e-cigarettes. For all their benefits at making our devices slim, powerful and easy to recharge, lithium-ion batteries have some big costs. They contain Cobalt, often mined in inhumane circumstances in places like the Congo. And when crushed, punctured, ripped or dropped, lithium-ion batteries can produce what the industry euphemistically calls a "thermal event." It happens because these batteries short circuit when the super-thin separator between their positive and negative parts gets breached.

Old devices end up in trouble when we throw them in the trash, stick them in the recycling bin, or even responsibly bring them to an e-waste center. There isn't official data on these fires, but the anecdotal evidence is stark. Since the spring of 2018 alone, batteries have been suspected as the cause of recycling fires in New York, Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin, Indiana, Idaho, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand. In California, a recent survey of waste management facilities found 83 percent had at least one fire over the last two years, of which 40 percent were caused by lithium-ion batteries.

11 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Removable batteries. by nbritton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This problem is easy to solve, make a law that requires all batteries to be removable.

    1. Re: Removable batteries. by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 2

      Please also mandate/fund muncipal battery disposal drives; otherwise people will just take out the battery and toss separately.

    2. Re:Removable batteries. by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      The law does nothing to address that people who aren't responsible enough to recycle their gadgets in the first place aren't going to be responsible enough to pull the battery before they ditch them or that they won't throw out batteries themselves when they age but the device is otherwise fine.

      The law would likely take several years before going into effect, which does nothing to help solve the problem in the intermediary period or for the large volume of existing gadgets.

      The law does nothing to solve the issue that it's often difficult to recycle any of these gadgets or components at all and that even if you can pay a Chinese company to take them for recycling, it may not actually be economically viable for them to recycle the gadget or battery and they're really just dumping it all somewhere else.

      This problem is hard to solve. Maybe we should make a law against people proposing making simplistic laws to solve complex problems. Of course we all know how well that would work out.

    3. Re:Removable batteries. by blindseer · · Score: 2

      This problem is easy to solve, make a law that requires all batteries to be removable.

      Here's a few questions. Are we going to require the manufacturer to create replacement batteries? How do you enforce that? We can make them removable, now define "removable". The iPad battery in the article was removable, you just need a heating pad, screwdriver, a plastic pry bar, and about an hour.

      Define the "battery". If you define it too broadly then the manufacturers can just define the device as the battery. Define it too tightly and each individual cell is a battery, and removing them means the cells spilling out and near impossible to replace. Removing them could be also made more difficult. I'm not sure how in this case but I'm guessing manufacturers would find a way if only out of spite.

      As an example on the difficulty of this just look at assault weapons bans around the world. What does an AR-15 have to do with an iPad? The definition of a "removable magazine". First you have to define what a magazine is and is not. Then you have to define "removable". In this case the desire was to make the magazine NOT removable. So they said that a non-removable magazine meant it requires the use of a "tool" to remove. Okay, now you have to define a "tool". From this came the "bullet button". I could go on but this is something still being fought back and forth between the law and the manufacturers.

      Here's the point. You can pass a law, and the manufacturers that don't like the law will follow the letter of the law, but still defeat the intent. Apple is one example in consumer electronics with the intent to keep some kind of standard on cell phone chargers. Apple has put a USB port on their chargers, but their phones have something not USB. Many people find this a problem because it still means having to buy an Apple certified cable. Others find this perfectly acceptable as it means the phone comes with a very much bog standard USB power brick that might be 5 watts, 12 watts, or whatever. Other manufacturers interpret this differently with ports on the device that at least looks like a USB port, and a wall wart power brick with a connector on the cable that looks like USB, but they violate the spec in potentially dangerous ways.

      You want a law? Okay, you write one. Go post it somewhere for review, and I can expect in no time you'll find a dozen people find 20 ways the law will not meet the intended goal. You get a company with potentially billions of dollars at stake and they will find many more ways to get around the law.

      You will need more than a law. You'll need to convince the people that make this stuff to get on board. Good luck with that.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  2. So what you're saying is.... by IWantMoreSpamPlease · · Score: 2

    ...who needs WMDs to take down a plane?
    ALl you need is a bunch of old tech stacked together with a bad battery...and stand back? /h or /s, pick one

    --
    So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
  3. Huh? by King_TJ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How would this really solve the problem? I saw people throwing old batteries in the trash on the regular, for as long as I can remember.

    1. Re:Huh? by EvilSS · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How would this really solve the problem? I saw people throwing old batteries in the trash on the regular, for as long as I can remember.

      Require deposits on the batteries, that you get back when you turn them in to a recycler. $5-$10 per battery would go a long way to ensuring they were recycled without being overly burdensome on the consumer.

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    2. Re:Huh? by DRJlaw · · Score: 4, Informative

      I saw people throwing old batteries in the trash on the regular, for as long as I can remember.

      Because those old batteries were zinc and manganese oxide, neither of which is particularly valuable, and the electrolyte was potassium hydroxide, which is neither particularly valuable nor particularly flammable.

      You could get some modest heat out of a semi-discharged 9V battery or, given enough time, some mild, acid-base reactions, but there's no high redox potential, flammable electrolyte glory to get a real bonfire going.

      Same thing with lead acid batteries, except for the nastiness of dissolved lead contaminating groundwater and strong acids that will burn flesh.

      NiCad are similar to the lead acid batteries. Heavy metal contamination problem, but no substantial ability to go up in a pyre.

  4. Some numbers? by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 2

    Some numbers on how serious this problem really is would have been nice.

    As an anecdote, I've been working at an outfit that recycles electronics here in the US, for about 3 years now. We've never had a fire from lithium batteries or any other battery.

  5. Not a euphemism by Lab+Rat+Jason · · Score: 2

    can produce what the industry euphemistically calls a "thermal event."

    what they are describing is not an euphemism... it's a literal... never in the history of the world has there been a better case for the use of the word "literal." It is literally a "thermal event."

    --
    Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
  6. Smarter Faster, Smaller! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    So, what the article is saying is that the smart phone industry, with their non-repairable form factor and replaceable batteries, is a dumpster fire?