The total cost of recycling batteries in developed markets is 2.68 million dollars a year, while in Serbia they could be halved due to lower labor costs and other resources. With the use of the latest, much more efficient technologies, the annual return on investment in that activity could increase from the current 29.2 percent to 75 percent, analysts of the National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED) claim.
Batteries are rapidly paving the way for increasing participation in the energy market, with an average growth of delivered energy per unit of battery for about 25,000 megawatt hours per year. It is estimated that the market for battery production in the world will reach the value of 56 billion dollars by 2024, and the importance of these energy storage devices in technological time is indicated by the fact that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2019 was awarded to battery designers.
However, such a large jump in demand also accelerates the consumption of minerals that are necessary for the production of batteries, and whose resources are limited. For example, even with the most conservative estimate that electric vehicle production could grow to ten million by 2025, it would require the consumption of 330,000 metric tons of cobalt, while projections indicate that total available stocks will be only 290,000 metric tons.
In addition, the marked increase in the exploitation of natural minerals due to the demand for batteries is in direct conflict with efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change with the help of electrical products, especially electric vehicles.
As a way out of this square, the increase in battery recycling is increasingly being promoted, which is still very small in relation to consumption. This gap is also huge in the European Union, where about 30,000 tons of these devices have been recycled in the past decade, or only 13.6 percent of the total used batteries.
The biggest problem in the proper treatment of this type of waste is batteries used in households, which is the case all over the world, having in mind the estimate that 95% of non-recycled batteries come from “home”.
Obstacles are also in the still insufficient cost-effectiveness of recycling and dangers to the health of those who work directly with toxic substances in this procedure. Recycling of lithium batteries, in which vanadium, chromium and fluorine are especially dangerous, is particularly complex, and is therefore rarely used.
“But with the advancement of technology and new discoveries in the field of chemistry, better solutions for more efficient and less risky procedures in the treatment of batteries are on the threshold. The calculation is also changing due to the increasingly obvious need to reduce dependence on limited raw materials. Therefore, profitability is now measured not only on the basis of the deadline needed to return the invested funds, but also the estimated loss due to insufficient utilization of recycling, and thus the inability to reuse valuable raw materials,” BiF states.
The NALED study states that, according to the data of the Environmental Protection Agency, an average of about 1,900 tons of spent batteries and accumulators end up in waste in Serbia every year, most of which are lead batteries. These data, however, do not include households, so there are only unofficial estimates that every citizen of Serbia uses about a kilogram of batteries a year, which after use end up in municipal waste or illegal landfills.
From there, the batteries “return” through the food chain, so that toxic substances, such as iron and cadmium, end up in the soil and groundwater. It is even worse if the waste ignites, because then the toxic particles are emitted first into the air, and then reach the soil and water again.
The main reasons for the small percentage of recycling of this type of waste are the lack of larger plants for these purposes, the poorly developed collection network and the system of financial incentives, especially when it comes to households. Currently, the incentives given to operators for recycling and reuse of used electronic equipment amount to 1.20 cents per kilogram for batteries, and 12 cents per kilogram for industrial batteries.
There is only one company in Serbia that exports used portable batteries, “Jugoimpex” from Nis, and its daughter company “E-recycling”. According to the data of that company, in 2020, 17,173 kilograms of unsorted waste batteries were exported for recycling to Germany. Bearing in mind that in Serbia there are no incentives for operators who export used batteries for further treatment, they themselves bear the costs ranging from 2.4 euros to four euros per kilogram of waste, according to the NALED study.
As in the world car batteries are mostly collected and treated, in Serbia due to their economic value and the average quantities are estimated at around 11,500 tons per year, BiF reports.
