LANCASTER − It’s probably hard to find many households in the United States that don’t use lithium batteries in some capacity.
They are found in common items like cell phones, laptop computers, rechargeable toothbrushes, electronic tablets, headphones and more.
Cirba Solutions, which has a Lancaster location, says the average household has 11 battery-powered devices. Yet the company said about half of households store used batteries at home because they don’t know what to do with them once the battery is dead.
“Which is certainly a problem, because there are a lot of risks associated with lithium batteries if you improperly dispose of them,” Cirba Solutions marketing and communications senior manager Kristen Bujold said.
She said those risks include the risk of fire. Therefore, Bujold said it’s important to see if a used battery is damaged since a damaged battery presents a greater fire risk.
“So you want to make sure you dispose of that one quickly and properly, especially if it is damaged,” she said. “Another way to protect the battery is if you put some clear plastic tape over the terminals of the lithium battery. Because that can reduce kind of the short circuit from the lithium battery. That also mitigates the risk of it going into thermal runaway (fire).”
Bujold said her company found that some people don’t know lithium batteries can be recycled, how to prepare them for recycling, or where to recycle them.
“I think there is kind of a gap in awareness of what to do with lithium batteries when they do reach end of life,” Bujold said. “So we certainly want to prioritize safety and also positive impacts on the environment so that these materials don’t end up in a landfill.”
Besides safety and environmental concerns, she said lithium batteries also contain critical minerals like lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese.
“When those batteries are recycled, those materials, which is actually what we do in Lancaster, we can extract the critical minerals from the battery,” she said. “And we can actually use those materials over and over again to create new batteries. So this helps strengthen our own domestic supply chain if we can produce these materials here in the U.S. instead of being so reliant on foreign sources for these critical minerals.”
So what is the proper way to get rid of a dead lithium battery?
Bujold said communities often host events to accept household waste. She said some take batteries. Bujold said a number of retailers also take in batteries, including Battery Plus.
Additionally, Cirba Solutions offers the We Recycle battery box.
“You purchase one of the boxes and you fill it with end-of-life batteries,” Bujold said. “We do advise individuals to either put clear plastic tape over the terminals or you can put them in a clear plastic bag. Then what happens is there is prepaid shipping, so once your box is full, you ship it back to one of our facilities and we’ll sort the batteries and recycle them based on the chemistry of it.”
She said the company will take any type of battery through the program, not just lithium ones. Visit www.cirbasolutions.com to purchase a battery box and learn more about battery recycling.
You cannot drop off recycled batteries at the local Cirba Solutions campus, however.
jbarron@gannett.com
740-681-4340
Twitter/X: @jeffrey_ba7142
This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Cirba Solutions talks about why recycling batteries is so important
Reporting by Jeff Barron, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette / Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jeff Barron, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette | USA TODAY Network
