Solving spent lithium-ion battery problems in China: Opportunities and challenges

Consumer electronics (CE) and electric vehicles (EVs) associated with renewable and sustainable energy have been rapidly changing human lifestyles and transportation habits since 1990s. These active innovations have resulted in a large amount of spent lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) in China. At least two problems are declining the sustainability of production and final disposal of LiBs: one is potential environmental and health risk, and the other is that more and more valuable resources are being stored in spent LiBs without appropriate recycling. We found that a lack of effective regulation, collection systems and recycling technologies are major barriers and challenges to solve the problems. And in order to develop a comprehensive management scheme for this waste stream in China, we proposed a three-pronged approach: (1) new regulation or policy is quite a necessity to deal with the challenges unique to spent LiBs recycling; (2) collection systems for CE and EV batteries can be substantially established based upon past experience of general e-waste management and extended producer responsibility, respectively; and (3) more emphasis needs to be placed on new technology for spent LiBs recycling, to tackle the large quantities of stored spent LiBs. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.