E-waste is a growing problem in South Africa. The reliance on electronics for everything from communication to entertainment has led to rising demand for and use of electronics and batteries that will eventually need to be thrown away.

Batteries pose a serious threat if they end up in landfills, they contain toxic and hazardous materials that could turn to leachate or in extreme cases combust. It is imperative that South Africa begins to earnestly tackle batteries, as our reliance on them grows more.

One of the most effective ways to combat the effects batteries have on the environment is by responsibly recycling them. Reclite, a recycling company, started by recycling lighting lamps and from this understanding – separating the valuable from the toxic– they expanded into all waste electrical and electronic equipment and battery recycling.

Negative and positive recycling streams

Steffen Schröder, Managing Director of Reclite, says, “At the beginning of Reclite we were bringing technology and processes from overseas to South Africa to show government how it works. Lamp recycling is a great benefit to the environment, but the process of separating the mercury from the glass, and aluminium or brass costs more than the yield.”

Reclite would process the mercury from the lamps into mercury cinnabar, resembling how mercury is found in nature for an almost complete circular process.

“This is what we refer to as a negative waste stream, the motive for this recycling is purely environmental as the process costs more than the material yield from the recycling, but the point was also to bring these processes into South Africa’s waste sector.

Reclite’s campaign to bring recycling processes to South Africa, even on negative waste streams, worked and in 2016 the company began accepting more e-waste such as laptops, phones, and eventually batteries. Battery recycling has become a large discussion in the public and industry sphere because of its ubiquity, and Schröder says, “Battery recycling can be a positive waste stream, one that turns a profit when done in sufficient quantities.”

As Schröder points out recycling is a social good, and an environmental necessity, and positive waste streams that turn a profit are useful not only for their economic gain, but they allow for negative waste streams to be processed without worrying about the cost. The recycling sector sits at a crossroads where the work in the sector is vital, but there is a need for funding and profit to keep the recycling activities going.

Battery recycling

“When we started accepting laptops, computers, and other products from ICT space, we also started to come across backup batteries from solar. The solar industry’s rising popularity in South Africa led to more batteries that needed to be taken to the end-of-life phase,” adds Schröder. The reality of batteries is that they are varied, and they each need to have their own recycling processes to deal with their specific chemical makeup.

“We are capable of recycling all household batteries here in South Africa, it is an entirely local process where the metal will go to smelters, and the cell separation material goes into energy recovery and the recovered black mass, a concentrated mixture of various valuable metals and elements,  is an additive or accelerant in other recycling processes,” says Schröder. This circularity is at the heart of battery recycling, where the potentially toxic material is used to aid other recycling processes, making recycling of household, usually alkaline batteries, extremely efficient.

“Alkaline batteries are often thought of as environmentally friendly, but the reality is that the large volume used by society can be harmful when they end up in landfills,” adds Schröder.

Other household battery types such as nickel metal hydride batteries or non-rechargeable lithium batteries have metals in them that in higher concentrations have a negative environmental impact. There are also batteries containing electrolytes which need to be separated and processed. “With nickel metal hydride there is nickel and zinc recovery, nickel-cadmium can yield nickel and cadmium, which is extremely toxic, and lithium recovery has become very important in battery recycling as the adoption of lithium batteries rises,” explains Schröder.

Lithium-ion batteries

The rechargeable lithium batteries pose their own challenges, as they are fast becoming the standard, but they also require special care. “It is important to note that while the reception of lithium-ion batteries is positive they are not created equally. From our side, it is important to differentiate between the high-quality lithium batteries like those used in electric vehicles, which can be a positive waste stream in high volumes, ” says Schröder who goes on to say, “On the other end there are ferro-phosphate lithium batteries-, like those found in laptops, smartphones, smartwatches.”

The lithium-ion revolution has made a lot of technology cheaper to make because ferro-phosphate lithium-ion batteries are cheaper than batteries that rely on nickel, cobalt, and manganese but this also means that the recovery process is less positive. The switch to lithium means that older technology batteries are being recycled, as the adoption of the new tech necessitates the safe disposal of the old tech.

Sourcing batteries

Reclite’s battery recycling sources their batteries from a variety of places. Within the waste industry, they work with Circular Energy, a producer responsibility organisation, that ensures battery producers are responsible for their own product’s end-of-life phase, this collaboration led to Reclite recycling hearing aid batteries.

The company also receives batteries from households through their Woolworths take-back retail stores, where Woolworths customers can drop off to recycle their old batteries in-store.

Schröder says “Reclite currently accept any battery type, from household to industrial, as well as any type of lithium-ion battery.” With lithium-ion batteries, the focus is on assessing them, and Reclite is in a trial phase where they reuse these batteries either for their own operations or community-based projects.

“When we receive lithium-ion batteries, we recycle where it makes sense to do so, but we also focus on the reuse or repurposing after safety and performance re-certification of those batteries, Extending the life of these batteries, where possible, is essential to the efficiency and circularity of the product. It is important to note we do not sell these batteries,” says Schröder.

Reuse end-of-life

Reclite’s service level agreements cover the reuse of batteries, and the reused batteries are chipped and tracked with geo-location to ensure they are used where they are supposed to be reused, and for the purpose they are intended to be used for. When these batteries do reach their end-of-life they are taken back by Reclite at no extra charge. At this point when the batteries coming n cannot be reused, they enter the ‘destructive recycling process.’

This is, as Schröder explains, “where the lithium-ion batteries are separated from their casings, and the battery is broken down all the way to the cell level. This is then separated locally through ‘home-grown South Africa technology’ into a high-quality black mass.” Depending on the cell type the black mass produced has an aluminium and copper content of less than half a percent which is then sent overseas for further processing.

Schröder adds, “The good news is that Reclite is currently working on bringing this overseas processing to South African shores.”

Barriers in South Africa

While Reclite does most of the processing in South Africa and is currently working to bring even more processes to South Africa there are some hurdles to the battery recycling capabilities in South Africa.

“The reality is that we do not have enough batteries, South Africa uses these batteries but right now we do not have enough coming to us to ensure the process is positive. The market for the older, more valuable batteries is shrinking, and the only way to remain positive is the valorising of lithium,” says Schröder.

“We processed over 200 tonnes of batteries last year and that even is not enough to sustain the industrial process to validate a more involved supply chain, reverse supply chain, here in South Africa.”

A major reason for this is the storage of lithium-ion batteries, Schröder says that with lead batteries there was an incentive for industry to remove them while there is none for lithium-ion batteries, or in some cases a cost.

While Reclite and the extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws start to minimise the cost, this still serves as a large hurdle, especially considering that lithium-ion batteries pose a fire hazard.

“While I am not in favour of shouting ‘fire’ because I think the discussion should be more nuanced the reality is that long-term storage can result in unstable cells, and lead to serious fire risks, especially in industry,” says Schröder. Something that everyone can start doing, from larger industries to household users, is to ensure that the company that produces the battery is EPR compliant. Schröder concludes, “Relying on PROs and EPR, while pushing South African capabilities is one of the ways to ensure a robust recycling sector that is as economically beneficial as it is environmentally.”