Ghana and Germany have begun an agreement for Germany to recycle lead-acid batteries from the West African nation as part of an initiative for sustainable interdependence between Europe and Africa.
The first shipment of 20 tons of used batteries has successfully been processed in Germany, by Johnson Controls at its Krautscheid plant. A local recycling firm collected and packaged the used SLI batteries from passenger vehicles and trucks for export. Transportation was arranged by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to be recycled in an environmentally sound way under the “Global Circular Economy of Strategic Metals: Best of Two Worlds (Bo2W) approach”.
Johann-Friedrich Dempwolff, managing director of JCI’s Power Solutions EMEA, confirmed the shipped batteries fulfill Johnson Controls’ requirements: “We can recycle up to 99% of a used battery at our recycling center in Germany. Part of this process is to ensure that batteries are shipped to us intact and that the acid isn’t drained into the ground in Ghana, as it has often been the case before, causing environmental damage.”
The project seeks to find a feasible way and affordable way for countries to work together to recycle batteries, end-of-life vehicles and electronic waste for which there is no local recycling facilities available.
The initiative has been implemented in response to an increase in the number of lead-acid batteries being used combined with the lack of proper recycling facilities in many African countries.
The project will run until May 2015 and is sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under its r3 programme and will involve recycling collections from Ghana and Egypt.