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Lithium battery recycling, an endless cycle for waste in Costa Rica

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Monday, March 13, 2023

In a world trying to move towards an environmentally sustainable model, what to do with millions of spent batteries? A pioneering company recycles this waste in Costa Rica in search of a circular economy future. Phones, laptops, tablets, electric vehicles and solar receivers need lithium batteries to operate. The question is what to do with them when they run out and become garbage that takes 500 years to decompose. “Today we know that garbage does not exist, we know that they are resources that we can renew”, says to AFP Guillermo Pereira, general director of Fortech, a company based in Cartago, 27 km east of San José, dedicated for 27 years to the recycling of technological products and for the last six years of lithium batteries. Some 1,500 tons of batteries fall into disuse annually in Costa Rica, says Francisco, the company’s project manager. Urban mining While mining multinationals seek to extract lithium from the salt flats of Chile, Bolivia or Australia, in Costa Rica this company innovates with “urban mining” that recycles minerals. He adds that “the world needs a circular economy”, that is, one that recycles and renews existing products for as long as possible in order to reverse climate change. The batteries are collected at collection points in shopping malls, electronics stores or electric vehicle dealerships. Daniel Rivas, technical manager in charge of batteries at Fortech, said that they are looking to “recover the materials to be able to carry out urban mining” and not have to “go to a mine to do more damage to the environment”. Mining is prohibited by law in Costa Rica. This Fortech plant “makes Costa Rica a pioneer in Latin America in the valorization of used lithium batteries,” notes the German Development Cooperation Agency GIZ. The University of Aachen in Germany estimates that by 2028 the amount of discarded batteries will exceed the recycling capacity in Europe. Blackmass When the lithium batteries arrive at Fortech’s industrial plant, they pass through a mechanical belt that feeds them into a shredder to generate a scrap of various metals. When these metals are separated in the lab, they result in “blackmass,” a grayish powder composed of cobalt oxide, nickel, manganese and lithium. “They are the fundamental part of the battery. They are scarce metals, high cost in the market, so it is important to recover them, in addition to the fact that their disposal by traditional means produces pollution in the environment,” said Henry Prado, a chemist at Fortech. This gray powder is decomposed to separate the metals, but the company has not yet implemented this process. Therefore, it sells the material obtained to industries in Europe dedicated to refining the material and manufacturing new batteries with the lithium in the “blackmass”. By 2035, some 1.4 million tons of batteries for recycling will be produced annually in Europe alone, according to estimates by the University of Aachen. Of each battery recycled, 57% of the resulting material is blackmass. The rest is copper, aluminum, plastic or iron, which is also sold for recycling. A ton of blackmass costs an average of $8,000 on the international market. Environmental care Beyond the production of new batteries from extracts of old ones, this eliminates the pollution produced by these materials if they are disposed of in the environment, says Prado. In addition, “it means we don’t have to go to natural sources to extract them,” he adds. The chemist explains that each ton of lithium extracted from battery recycling generates a quarter of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by traditional lithium mining. This mineral, called “white gold” or “oil of the 21st century,” has seen its price soar from $5,700 a ton in November 2020 to $60,500 in September 2022 thanks to the rise of electric vehicles, in the race to abandon fossil fuels. But the dark side of lithium recovery is that each extraction plant consumes millions of liters of water per day. Claus Kruse, representative of the German Cooperation Agency in Costa Rica, which is assisting Fortech in its innovation, points out that they are looking to achieve a global recycling chain. “The batteries that arrive from Asia, Europe or the United States to Costa Rica are used here, end their useful life, are recycled, the materials are recovered and sent, for example, to Europe for the production of new batteries in a circular economy logic,” said Kruse. The post Lithium battery recycling, an endless cycle for waste in Costa Rica appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

Phones, laptops, tablets, electric vehicles and solar receivers need lithium batteries to operate. The question is what to do with them when they run out and become garbage that takes 500 years to decompose.

“Today we know that garbage does not exist, we know that they are resources that we can renew”, says to AFP Guillermo Pereira, general director of Fortech, a company based in Cartago, 27 km east of San José, dedicated for 27 years to the recycling of technological products and for the last six years of lithium batteries.

Some 1,500 tons of batteries fall into disuse annually in Costa Rica, says Francisco, the company’s project manager.

Urban mining

While mining multinationals seek to extract lithium from the salt flats of Chile, Bolivia or Australia, in Costa Rica this company innovates with “urban mining” that recycles minerals.

He adds that “the world needs a circular economy”, that is, one that recycles and renews existing products for as long as possible in order to reverse climate change.

The batteries are collected at collection points in shopping malls, electronics stores or electric vehicle dealerships.

Daniel Rivas, technical manager in charge of batteries at Fortech, said that they are looking to “recover the materials to be able to carry out urban mining” and not have to “go to a mine to do more damage to the environment”. Mining is prohibited by law in Costa Rica.

This Fortech plant “makes Costa Rica a pioneer in Latin America in the valorization of used lithium batteries,” notes the German Development Cooperation Agency GIZ.

The University of Aachen in Germany estimates that by 2028 the amount of discarded batteries will exceed the recycling capacity in Europe.

Blackmass

When the lithium batteries arrive at Fortech’s industrial plant, they pass through a mechanical belt that feeds them into a shredder to generate a scrap of various metals.

When these metals are separated in the lab, they result in “blackmass,” a grayish powder composed of cobalt oxide, nickel, manganese and lithium.

“They are the fundamental part of the battery. They are scarce metals, high cost in the market, so it is important to recover them, in addition to the fact that their disposal by traditional means produces pollution in the environment,” said Henry Prado, a chemist at Fortech.

This gray powder is decomposed to separate the metals, but the company has not yet implemented this process.

Therefore, it sells the material obtained to industries in Europe dedicated to refining the material and manufacturing new batteries with the lithium in the “blackmass”.

By 2035, some 1.4 million tons of batteries for recycling will be produced annually in Europe alone, according to estimates by the University of Aachen.

Of each battery recycled, 57% of the resulting material is blackmass. The rest is copper, aluminum, plastic or iron, which is also sold for recycling. A ton of blackmass costs an average of $8,000 on the international market.

Environmental care

Beyond the production of new batteries from extracts of old ones, this eliminates the pollution produced by these materials if they are disposed of in the environment, says Prado.

In addition, “it means we don’t have to go to natural sources to extract them,” he adds. The chemist explains that each ton of lithium extracted from battery recycling generates a quarter of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by traditional lithium mining.

This mineral, called “white gold” or “oil of the 21st century,” has seen its price soar from $5,700 a ton in November 2020 to $60,500 in September 2022 thanks to the rise of electric vehicles, in the race to abandon fossil fuels.

But the dark side of lithium recovery is that each extraction plant consumes millions of liters of water per day.

Claus Kruse, representative of the German Cooperation Agency in Costa Rica, which is assisting Fortech in its innovation, points out that they are looking to achieve a global recycling chain.

“The batteries that arrive from Asia, Europe or the United States to Costa Rica are used here, end their useful life, are recycled, the materials are recovered and sent, for example, to Europe for the production of new batteries in a circular economy logic,” said Kruse.

The post Lithium battery recycling, an endless cycle for waste in Costa Rica appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

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Rich Nations Are Burying the Developing World in Plastic Waste

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Rich countries export twice as much plastic waste to the developing world as previously thought

Current estimates only cover “the tip of the plastic waste iceberg.”

High-income countries have long sent their waste abroad to be thrown away or recycled — and an independent team of experts says they’re inundating the developing world with much more plastic than previously estimated. According to a new analysis published last week, United Nations data on the global waste trade fails to account for “hidden” plastics in textiles, contaminated paper bales, and other categories, leading to a dramatic, 1.8-million-metric-ton annual underestimate of the amount of plastic that makes its way from the European Union, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States to poor countries. The authors highlight the public health and environmental risks that plastic exports pose in the developing world, where importers often dump or incinerate an unmanageable glut of plastic waste. “Toxic chemicals from these plastics are poisoning communities,” said Therese Karlsson, a science and technical adviser for the nonprofit International Pollutant Elimination Network, or IPEN. IPEN helped coordinate the analysis along with an international team of researchers from Sweden, Turkey, and the U.S. Many estimates of the scale of the plastic waste trade make use of a U.N. database that tracks different types of products through a “harmonized commodity description and coding system,” which assigns each product category a code starting with the letters HS. HS 3915 — “waste, parings, and scrap” of plastics — is often assumed by researchers and policymakers to describe the total volume of plastic that’s traded globally. But the new analysis argues this is only “the tip of the plastic waste iceberg,” since HS 3915 misses large quantities of plastic that are included in other product categories. Discarded clothing, for example, may be tracked as HS 5505 and not counted as plastic waste, even though 60 to 70 percent of all textiles are made of some kind of plastic. And another category called HS 6309 — used clothing and accessories — is assumed by the U.N. to be reused or recycled and is therefore not considered waste at all, even though an estimated 40 percent of these exported clothes are deemed unsalvageable and end up dumped in landfills. Plastic contamination in paper bales — the huge stacks of unsorted paper that are shipped abroad to be recycled — also tends to be overlooked in estimates of the international plastic waste trade, even though these bales may contain 5 to 30 percent plastic that must be removed and discarded. Accounting for plastic from just these two product categories increases plastic waste exports from all the regions analyzed by as much as 1.8 million metric tons per year — 1.3 million from paper bales and half a million from textiles. That’s more than double the plastic that’s counted when only plastic “waste, parings, and scrap” are analyzed. Additional product categories like electronics and rubber add even more to the global plastic waste trade, although Karlsson said a lack of data makes it hard to quantify their exact contribution. All this plastic strains developing countries’ waste management infrastructure, leading to large quantities of plastic waste ending up in dumps, landfills, or incinerators. Burning this waste causes hazardous air pollution for nearby communities, and dumps and landfills can leach chemicals like PCBs — a group of compounds that can cause cancer in humans — into soil and water supplies. More than 10,000 chemicals are used in the production of plastic, and one-fourth of them have been flagged by researchers for their toxicity and potential to build up in the environment and in people’s bodies. The report calls for greater transparency from plastic and petrochemical industries about the chemicals they put in their plastic products, and for regulators to require them to use fewer, nontoxic chemicals. Karlsson also called for a total ban on the global plastic waste trade, along with enforceable limits on the amount of plastics the world makes in the first place. “Regardless of what way we’re handling plastic waste, we need to decrease the amount of plastics that we generate,” she told Grist, “because the amount of plastic waste being produced today will never be sustainable.” Without aggressive action to phase down plastic production, the world is on track to have produced a cumulative 26 billion metric tons of plastic waste by 2050, most of which will be incinerated, dumped, or sent to landfills. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Rich countries export twice as much plastic waste to the developing world as previously thought on Mar 13, 2023.

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Lithium battery recycling, an endless cycle for waste in Costa Rica

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Blackmass

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Join us to forge
a sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Lithium battery recycling, an endless cycle for waste in Costa Rica

Urban mining

Blackmass

Environmental care

Related News

Gold Nanoparticle Catalyst Helps Turn Plastic Waste Into Useful Compounds

EPA chief: 'Unlawful' for states to unilaterally reject East Palestine waste

Rich Nations Are Burying the Developing World in Plastic Waste

Rich countries export twice as much plastic waste to the developing world as previously thought

Biden administration proposes tighter rule on coal plant wastewater

Suggested Viewing

It's Look Sunshine

El País de la Eterna Primavera (Land of the Eternal Spring)

Keeper of the Creek

The Divers

Kingdom of Waste

Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future