Chinese analysts have compared the growing threat of waste lithium batteries to the ‘Great Horse Manure Crisis’ that swamped the world’s cities in the late 1800s.
The 19th century crisis, caused by dung coming from the colossal number of horses that were needed for transport, led to a prediction in The Times newspaper of London that ‘in 50 years every street in the capital will be buried under nine feet of manure’.
In China some 140 years later, analysts at the technical web portal Ofweek have questioned whether the country will face the same problem with its modern-day transport waste: millions of spent lithium-ion EV batteries.
With China’s current total annual production of 379,000 EVs, the predicted amount of scrap from batteries alone is estimated to reach 12 million tons.
Battery power capacity in the first four months of 2016 matched the total for 2015 (32 gigawatt hours).
But unlike China’s lead-acid battery pollution issues— which are still far from over— it does appear that the authorities are making efforts to pre-empt a similar crisis.
A number of official organisations have jointly issued a document setting out policies to identify areas of concern and deal with them.
The National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry, Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Commerce and the
Administration of Quality Supervision (AQSIQ) have issued an ‘Electric Vehicle Battery Recycling Technology Policy’ which includes a battery-coding system and a battery-recycling traceability system for all batteries, including those imported.
Under the guidelines, waste management will be regulated and an industrial standard implemented, but the report recognises significant hurdles such as the cost of recycling and the lack of companies qualified to recycle or deal properly with waste.
Henry Ford’s invention of the motor car came just in time to stop the world’s cities drowning under horse manure.
In China, the lithium problem underlines a growing need for new methods to deal with today’s transport waste.
