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I tell you what happens, like other electrical components: 1. Batteries ripped out of cars 2. Sold to "unscrupulous" scrap dealers 3. Put on boats to Phillip

I tell you what happens, like other electrical components: 1. Batteries ripped out of cars 2. Sold to "unscrupulous" scrap dealers 3. Put on boats to Phillipines or West Africa 4. Crushed and pounded with a rock by a 10 year old child, then burned in a rudimentary smelter to separate metals from plastics. 5. Extracted metals bought by middlemen 6. Metals certified as being safely mined/sourced 7. Re-manufactured into a car battery Battery powered cars are going to be the next disaster, after the fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms. I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks.

jurip 5y ago
Is the fibre glass thing actually a disaster? According to this Bloomberg article https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... it sounds more like something that would be nice to reduce but is pretty far from a disaster: “Wind turbine blades at the end of their operational life are landfill-safe, unlike the waste from some other energy sources, and represent a small fraction of overall U.S. municipal solid waste,” according to an emailed statement from the group. It pointed to an Electric Power Research Institute study that estimates all blade waste through 2050 would equal roughly .015% of all the municipal solid waste going to landfills in 2015 alone.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  The idea that wind turbine blades need to be recycled is more of a fetish than a requirement.
- Malic 5y ago
  It does appear there is a solution for this on the way. https://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-science/wind-turbine-maker-vestas-unveils-new-blade-recycling-technology/article https://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-science/wind-turbine-mak... TL;DR: It appears Vestas is partnering up with another company to bring to market a process to break down the epoxy resins that bind the fiberglass in the blades. The resulting base chemicals are useful for the production of further resins and new windmill blades. This process could be useful in other industries.
- toss1 5y ago
  Yes, this is considered a problem, but not a disaster. As wind blades multiply and start to age out, this is already being worked on very strongly in the composites industry, and there are major breakthroughs[e.g., 1,2]. This should not be a disaster in the future [1] https://electrek.co/2021/04/26/a-scottish-university-finds-new-life-for-old-wind-turbine-blades/ https://electrek.co/2021/04/26/a-scottish-university-finds-n... [2] https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1716110/vestas-develops-gamechanger-wind-blade-recycling-method https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1716110/vestas-deve...
- ArcFeind 5y ago
  Can turbine blades be used as sunken fake reefs? They're big and hollow, could be a good place to nuture nature?
dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
> 4. Crushed and pounded with a rock by a 10 year old child, then burned in a rudimentary smelter to separate metals from plastics. https://youtu.be/wzJI8gfpu5Y?t=2317 https://youtu.be/wzJI8gfpu5Y?t=2317, cue children at https://youtu.be/wzJI8gfpu5Y?t=2364 https://youtu.be/wzJI8gfpu5Y?t=2364
- iExploder 5y ago
  exactly that. politicians and visionaries with big ideas about green future are one side of the story the other is the implementation and how it works in practice. thrash tends to conveniently vanish into the 3rd world or east europe, where it gets burned or poisons the environment.
- Ddkkjfj 5y ago
  People are aware of this bit it doesn't fit in the narrative for ev Akkus. Those are not broke after 5-10 year of usage. Small cells might be broken but replaceable and if not used for cars we still can and will use them for power storage. And then we can recycle them.
  - dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    > Small cells might be broken but replaceable You think this is the kind of thing people will do in reality? Will there be economic incentive for this activity? > And then we can recycle them. What will the recycling look like? Any idea if it’ll be a net carbon negative?
    - Forbo 5y ago
      > Will there be economic incentive for this activity? Pay several thousand to replace the entire battery pack, or pay some fraction to replace the bad cells? Seems pretty clear to me. > Any idea if it’ll be a net carbon negative? Doesn't need to be carbon negative, it just needs to be less bad than what we're doing currently with ICE.
      - 5y ago
StavrosK 5y ago
> Battery powered cars are going to be the next disaster > I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. "Battery powered cars are a small disaster, so I'll keep my big disaster instead".
- daniellarusso 5y ago
  It uses waste vegetable oil.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    Unless I drive to a specific gas station to get 100% recycled fuel, the normal diesel only has 10-20% such products, and likely less in summer. It's not nothing and certainly better than just a few years ago, but it's still not exactly like a significant fraction of diesels use a significant fraction of vegetable oil.
  - cduzz 5y ago
    This is a laudable and reasonable small scale approach to personal transportation. There are certainly enough old diesels out there and enough people willing to go around collecting old oil to keep a small number of people occupied and mobile. It is also not really a viable large scale solution to "how do you move people around?" There are lots of really good answers (walking, public transit, electric bicycles) but one obvious answer is "cars" and electrifying those is probably a good solution. Electricity can be generated from fossil fuels more efficiently at large scales than small (a power plant produces less CO2 than a car for a given amount of work). Electricity can also be generated by extracting "free" energy from the environment (wind / solar / hydro / dogs on treadmills). The distribution system for electricity is already quite robust and is already everywhere, and people like cars. There's even lots of inexpensive electricity available at night, when most people aren't driving their cars. All we need is a way to get the power to the cars that park where people don't own the parking space. Disposing of the waste stream of parts of the cars has always been a problem. Hopefully people come up with a way to solve it; there's enough valuable metal in a car battery that it is likely they will. There are already all sorts of terrifying industrial processes which I can't imagine are possibly cost effective and yet they're the foundation of modern society. There are also all sorts of hideous "farm out the cost to someone else" processes relying on destroying somewhere else / poisoning someone else. People refine gasoline by boiling crude oil in a rusting metal tank; people refine gasoline in trillion dollar oil refineries. Why and where and for who answers how it gets done. Can one cost-effectively convert refined materials in a battery (cobalt / nickle / lithium) back into raw inputs for a new battery? Can it be done profitably by a child in a toxic fire pit or can it be done profitably by a chilled shredder in inert gas? Not a simple problem, but probably one that can partially be solved with market incentives and partially solved by laws and partially it won't get solved. But we should probably try, right?
ninjamayo 5y ago
...which will go through a similar disassembly process and also pollute the environment for as long as it lives.
paulcole 5y ago
The good thing is that there are going to be so many disasters that the car battery disposal disaster will likely get lost in the shuffle. Full disclosure: I am long TSLA.
rhaps0dy 5y ago
> fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms What's the problem with burying blades in a landfill? They don't degrade, OK, but rocks also don't degrade. - They're too big to drift to the ocean and be ingested by animals, which is the problem with plastic objects. - They don't leak nasty stuff into the groundwater, because landfills are lined properly to prevent that. Also fibreglass is pretty much inert.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  Do fiberglass degrade to a point it can't be recycled? We already use it for multiple things, from boats to PCBs, so there would be quite a big market. Any reasons why it shouldn't or couldn't be recycled?
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    It shouldn't be recycled if it's a net economic loss to do so.
    - Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
      This line of thought got us global warming, micro plastic contamination of all of earth's water, pfas, a hole in the ozone, etc.
      - pfdietz 5y ago
        I am assuming the negative externalities are included in the cost. What is the negative externality of not recycling turbine blades?
      - imtringued 5y ago
        Sending plastic waste overseas was an idea of the recycling zealots (people who recycle even in situations where it is worse).
      - epistasis 5y ago
        No, we got those problems because we didn't evaluate the environmental costs of these technologies, or ignored the people who did evaluate them. What is the environmental cost of burying fiberglass wind turbine blades versus recycling them? What is the environmental cost of not building these wind turbines right now, as fast as we possible can, and stopping the extraction of fossil fuels as fast as we possibly can? Extremely real, the extinction of hundreds of thousands of species, massive disruption to all habitats, including those of us humans. We have a narrow path to averting the worst effects of climate change. The worst threat to actually enacting change is the sort of false concern that keeps us on our present course driving off the cliff.
legutierr 5y ago
It seems rather inefficient for the batteries to be shipped overseas and for their materials to be extracted by 10 year olds, rather than to just have the batteries be recycled in the country where they are used.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  There aren't any 10 year olds in Western countries who are available to do the work. More seriously, global shipping at scale is ridiculously cheap. This site currently shows a rate of $987 to ship a 20' container from NYC to Jakarta: https://www.icontainers.com/ship-container/indonesia/ https://www.icontainers.com/ship-container/indonesia/
  - tssva 5y ago
    I would think older children would be better for the work. 10 year olds should be used for task where their smaller size is an asset.
    - davidgould 5y ago
      Perhaps, but you have to feed older ones more.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  but it's cheaper
- sect2k 5y ago
  Because it's cheaper to have them shipped to a third world country, where there is little to no environmental regulation and worker protection, then the alternative.
  - legutierr 5y ago
    Cars aren't consumer electronics. Ordinary people don't just throw them away—they are usually traded-in to dealers—and most companies don't have big fleets that get replaced every few years, like companies replace their computer systems and other devices. Car parts are overall more expensive, and installation, replacement and even disposal happens through specialized entities, typically. Most maintenance work is done by manufacturers or dealers themselves. In other words, it's not inevitable that car battery systems would necessarily be sent overseas the same way that consumer electronics are when they reach end of life. With lower volume and more centralization, regulation will be easier to implement and enforce. And the economics may also make it cheaper for initial recycling to be situated in the originating country as well, given that the parts are more valuable and given the economies of scale that emerge from centralized reclamation networks. Already in the US there is a healthy industry of third-party businesses that will replace hybrid car batteries and reclaim the old systems for refurbishment. Most of the reclaimed systems are refurbished and re-used. There's no reason to think that with proper regulation and standardization an efficient & environmentally-safe reclamation market cannot emerge in first-world countries, preventing car battery waste from spilling over to third-world countries.
lmilcin 5y ago
While I agree this scenario is representative to what is likely to happen if nobody reacts, I don't agree that it must necessarily happen or that is a reason to stay on petrol cars. The difference between batteries and petrol is that batteries can be reprocessed. The problem is unless we do something (set up regulation) it is likely the unregulated way in which it is going to happen will cost a huge pollution and suffering. Think in terms of lead and lead-acid batteries specifically. There is a mandated system (at least here in EU) that tries to prevent the components of lead acid batteries to get back into environment. For example, when I want to buy a replacement battery I can't throw the old one in the trash and I am expected to exchange the old one for the new one and pay extra if I want to only buy new one without giving away the old. Is it too hard to think we can do something like that for the huge card batteries which are much less disposable than the lead acid ones?
- Clubber 5y ago
  >Is it too hard to think we can do something like that for the huge card batteries which are much less disposable than the lead acid ones? Who is we? I don't remember being able to vote for any politicians that are interested in this sort of thing. Hydrogen cell cars are probably the best option for the future. It's very abundant naturally and its byproduct is H2O. We have to figure out how to mass produce it though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnzuuLpYFVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnzuuLpYFVg
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    > Who is we? We, the People? Isn't that the whole point of democracy?
    - Clubber 5y ago
      Lol. Yes, yes. And cops are the good guys and drug users are evil. I remember all this from elementary school too.
      - lmilcin 5y ago
DominikD 5y ago
Good thing that German diesels had no scandals of their own! ;)
- sobellian 5y ago
  Yes and instead of employing ten year olds we get to transact with all the famously ethical and benevolent regimes that control most of the global oil supply ;)
spoiledtechie 5y ago
Exactly what I was going to say.
hannob 5y ago
> Battery powered cars are going to be the next disaster, after the fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms. Serious question: What is the fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms? I googled for it and I didn't find it. There's currently no way to recycle these, ok. They usually end up in landfills or incinerators. It's not ideal and we can hope that better technologies will come up in the future. But that's not really what I'd call a scandal.
- ehnto 5y ago
  Surely it would be as bad that there are countless boat hulls, kayaks, canoes, surf boards, childrens playgrounds, car aero, outdoor furniture ... you get the picture. Windfarms are hardly the source of the most fibreglass and it is at least relatively inert as waste. No green energy is truly green or perfect, but we aren't aiming for perfect we just want better.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  You might want to call it a scandal, if you want to find reasons of being opossed to regenerative energies in general. Otherwise it is a mere technical problem calling for a better solution than what is avaiable right now.
- mothsonasloth 5y ago
  Its not a scandal yet! Because we are approaching a cliff when a lot of 1st and 2nd generation wind turbines are about to be decommissioned or refurbished. Note: this is for Scotland. Its bad enough a single wind turbine blade requiring a convoy escort along small winding roads for installation. Now they have to do the same and dispose them. The cost is going to have to be paid somewhere, most likely by consumers. Or they will be disposed off cheaply in a bad way.
  - nagrom 5y ago
    Why wouldn't they cut the blade up in situ for transportation at the end of its working life? Seems better than having huge convoys to take them away for recycling.
  - 5y ago
ehnto 5y ago
Fibre glass is far more widely spread than in windfarms. Is there a particularly troubling aspect in the way windfarms use it?
credit_guy 5y ago
> I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. I did not have a point of reference to see in what sense this is efficient or not, so I checked how much CO2 humans exhale. It turns out your car emits about as much as 2 humans exhale. Here's the math: - car: on average people drive about 10000 kilometers/year in the UK [1], so if you drive like an average person in the UK, your car puts out 790 kg of CO2 in a year - humans: on average people exhale about 2.3 pounds of CO2 per day [2]. That makes about 762 kg/year for 2 people [1]https://www.thecarcrashdetective.com/americans-drive-more-dying/ https://www.thecarcrashdetective.com/americans-drive-more-dy... [2] https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/waiting-exhale https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/waiting-exhale
- oddeyed 5y ago
  Not necessarily comparable for purposes of global heating effect (not sure if that's what you're doing or not). The CO2 that a human exhales is from the carbon in the food they consume. That carbon ultimately comes (whether indirectly via animals or not) from plants, which drew that CO2 out of the air directly, typically at most a few years prior. The net change in CO2 concentration is zero. Contrast this to burning fossil fuels which moves carbon from places where it is not enhancing the greenhouse effect (e.g. it's in coal, gas wells or crude oil) into the atmosphere where it will cause global heating - a net increase in CO2 concentration. As a side note, methane produced by livestock or food waste does still have a global heating effect as CH4 is a more "potent" greenhouse gas than CO2, so there is a net increase in heating potential due to this conversion.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  What you should not forget is, that CO2 isn't the only gas emitted by diesel cars. Gases and dust, that are a serious health hazard en masse in cities. Also I doubt that the 79g/100km is the full number, that includes drilling for, refining and transporting that diesel to your car, before you can burn it there. And btw., those kids in africa are poisening themself with ICE car parts too. So I don't think anyone said, we should all wreck our ice cars today and go all electric immediately. That clearly makes no sense ressource wise. But in the long run, yes. I want noise, smoke, fumes and dust free cities as soon as possible, along with a somewhat stable and intact environment. You have to start somewhere.
canadianfella 5y ago
This is satire right?
CAT0 5y ago
Not in the EU. The Batteries Regulation signed the December 10th 2020 aims to ensure that batteries placed in the EU market are sustainable and safe throughout their entire life cycle. https://ec.europa.eu/environment/topics/waste-and-recycling/batteries-and-accumulators_en https://ec.europa.eu/environment/topics/waste-and-recycling/...
- kybernetyk 5y ago
  Yeah, the mafia cares about EU regulations. Or so I've heard...
  - baq 5y ago
    the mafia doesn't make batteries.
    - kybernetyk 5y ago
      But they do waste "disposal" https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/trash-worth-millions-of-euros https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/trash-worth-mill...
      - baq 5y ago
        oh for sure, not denying that. but - regulation should make the good thing easy: battery construction rules must require ease of recycling and recycling itself should be the easy default option in practice, not just on paper. it can be done. no profit for the mafia left in that case.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
I get that this is a problem, but comparing it to oil as being the better alternative is not convincing: oil have been at the center of terrible wars, corruptions and ecological disasters for decades. Entire populations have been displaced, robbed, poisoned, conned and/or killed for oil. Let's not pretend it comes with less suffering attached, not to mention we had almost a century to improve the process, and we are comparing it to electrical cars, something that had been barely marketable to the public for 10 years.
worldsayshi 5y ago
> Battery powered cars are going to be the next disaster, after the fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms. > I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. Why are you framing this as being a particular problem for electric cars and wind farms? It sounds like a problem that encompasses all of global trade, manufacturing and modern technology.
- ppf 5y ago
  >It sounds like a problem that encompasses all of global trade, manufacturing and modern technology. It is, which is why it is absurd on its face that supposedly more "sustainable" solutions to transport and electricity generation increase all three of those.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
    It's not facially absurd,maybe the math won't pan out but humanity needs to get off fossil fuels or face an uninhabitable earth.
    - ppf 5y ago
      It is absurd on its face to have developing countries burn oil and (usually low-grade) coal to manufacture huge battery packs (and all the other electronic items that our Western lives dictate), all so we can claim we live CO2-neutral lives. You might be right, but EVs are not the solution. The solution is realising that we just can't use so much energy.
      - js8 5y ago
        Actually, EVs are (at least part of) a solution. Electric motors are more efficient than internal combustion engines, and even more efficient if you also count all the oil extraction, processing and transport. Of course we need to move from burning coal too, but EVs are absolutely part of that.
        5y ago
gambiting 5y ago
>>I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) The thing is, we realized some time ago that CO2 emissions are not all that matters in a car, and your diesel is spewing very harmful NOx emissions whever you drive, plus if you haven't got a DPF(I don't know how old your car is) the amount of fine particulate matter that is proven to be dangerous to health is quite high as well.
zthrowaway 5y ago
Also the pollution that is created to make the batteries and also to generate the additional electricity demand on coal power plants to charge all the cars. Auto makers are just selling the feeling of doing something good for the environment to consumers because that’s what is in vogue.
FriedrichN 5y ago
>I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. I bet that's the exact reason why you drive that exact car. Because of course the coolant, oil, acid batteries, etc. your car uses is disposed of correctly, or one of the hundreds of parts that needs replacing every X amount of time in an ICE. Never mind the waste that oil production itself causes. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/01/fossil-fuel-cars-make-hundreds-of-times-more-waste-than-electric-cars https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/01/fossil-fuel... New modes of transportation and energy generation will not be 100% clean and waste free, I think it would be naive to think we could actually do that. But they can be steps in the right direction. If your cynical assumption is that we can't do it right anyway, why do you even pretend that driving your old car is somehow better? If we won't dispose of lithium batteries properly, we won't dispose of all the things your old car produces either.
- ppf 5y ago
  Old oil is processed and re-used (as cheaper oil, or for heating). Lead-acid batteries have practically all of the lead re-used. I'm not sure where the acid itself, nor coolant, goes, but they're not the most damaging of pollutants. >one of the hundreds of parts that needs replacing every X amount of time in an ICE Yep, it's usually one of the electronic parts, which is why I have no faith that EVs will be significantly more reliable.
  - FriedrichN 5y ago
    > Old oil is processed and re-used (as cheaper oil, or for heating) Or illegally dumped if we follow OPs cynical reasoning. > it's usually one of the electronic parts I didn't know tubes, gaskets, seals, clutches, oil filters, spark plugs, fuel pumps, radiators, alternators were electronic parts. I am not claiming EVs are perfect but to propose classical ICE vehicles are somehow much better simply does not make any sense. To exist as a modern human is to have an impact on your environment.
    - ppf 5y ago
      Those are all relatively inert parts, and scrap steel and aluminium is relatively easily extracted. I didn't set out to argue that ICE vehicles are much better (although, honestly, I think it might be a defensible position), but the waste products from an end-of-life EV are significantly more damaging than those from an ICE.
anovikov 5y ago
What's wrong about it? As long as materials are not wasted.
ed_balls 5y ago
> Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks If CO2 was the problem, diesels would be fine. We would recapture CO2 in the future. The bigger problem is particulates and NOx
bumbada 5y ago
Not really. Batteries like AAA are already being recycled because it makes economical sense. In fact thieves steal it and need vigilance. You are confused with "electrical components" that are mostly plastic, very hard to disassemble and not worth it economically. A Tesla battery cost over $6000. Materials like Cobalt or Lithium are worth a lot in a concentrated form, much easier than extracting it from the mine. As technology improves, the metals in those batteries are worth more. So what is going to happen is: Short term: people will use their old car batteries for electrical network support. Medium term: Governments are going to require recycling protocols like they already do with ICEs cars. Long term: Companies will develop protocols to recycle it. A battery is the same thing repeated hundreds of times. The individual cells are standardized,and platforms will be shared between different manufacturers, that makes it way easier to recycle.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  > Batteries like AAA are already being recycled because it makes economical sense. Are they? My depleted AAA alkalines go straight in the trash (which is the direction of our fairly green-friendly city of Cambridge, MA). * - https://www.cambridgema.gov/Services/householdhazardouswastedisposal#!rc-cpage=252958 https://www.cambridgema.gov/Services/householdhazardouswaste...
  - rjsw 5y ago
    > our fairly green-friendly city of Cambridge, MA Everything is relative, they don't go in the trash anywhere I know in Europe.
    - rapnie 5y ago
      > anywhere I know I was recently quite disillusioned about that by the series "The Vuilnisman" (The Garbage Man) in The Netherlands, where point for point the entire responsible waste disposal and recycling was shown to be mostly a paper reality. For instance numerous tricks exist to label trash as building material and it can be dumped anywhere for a good profit. If only we knew.
Ddkkjfj 5y ago
You mean that right? Like you really think a big Akku from a ev is economically so irrelevant that we will ship it to Africa? Fixing them (if a cell is broken) is easy and we can use them for 10 years more. No one will just give it away and I bet that in Africa they would fix cells and use it for energy storage as well. Your car is not just shitty for our climate your exhaust is also polluting the air we breathe
moondistance 5y ago
They will increasingly go to Li-Cycle [1] and similar. The tech is still not perfect, but it's much better than the historical norm. [1] https://li-cycle.com/ https://li-cycle.com/
- ByronFortescue 5y ago
  Similar company in this space, very promising, saw it in action and it's quite simple in essence but very scalable because of that. https://www.relectrify.com/ https://www.relectrify.com/
wiz21c 5y ago
Keeping your car much longer is actually a good idea : the more you keep it the less likely you'll buy another one. Not buying a car looks like the best solution to me.
dpierce9 5y ago
I don’t think your carbon footprint math is right. Every liter of diesel burnt produces about 2.35Kg (a gallon produces about 20lbs) of CO2. This would imply your diesel gets 30km/liter or 70mpg which seems awfully high. Audi’s current, most efficient (US) models are less than half that. You might also care about NOx, SOx, and particulates as well. The diesel is an utter failure as far as particulates go.
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  It could be an A2 3L, which shares the drivetrain etc. with the VW Lupo 3L, so named because it used just 3L of diesel per 100km (under ideal conditions, of course). I don't know of any current Audis with similar repeatable fuel economy.
tibbydudeza 5y ago
> Crushed and pounded with a rock by a 10 year old child, then burned in a rudimentary smelter to separate metals from plastics. Yep - e-cycling all our old iPads'/iPhones/PC's with the entire village inhaling all those toxic fumes and polluting the groundwater.
poopypoopington 5y ago
Which Audi do you have?
JTbane 5y ago
>I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. Diesel vehicles emit a lot more NO2, as well as particulates that damage the lungs. Sure, it's less CO2 than gasoline cars, but is it worth it for urban air quality?
BitwiseFool 5y ago
If you actually want to see what these places look like, read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie
tuatoru 5y ago
> I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. Diesel exhaust is a concentrated source of sub-micron teratogenic particles. You're increasing your family members' cancer risk. Against this you have a made-up fantasy. There is every reason to believe Li-ion vehicle batteries will be recycled as effectively and safely as lead-acid vehicle batteries.
tzs 5y ago
> 4. Crushed and pounded with a rock by a 10 year old child, then burned in a rudimentary smelter to separate metals from plastics. I'm certainly no mechanical engineering or robotics expert, but based on watching a bazillion episodes of "How It's Made", "Modern Marvels", and similar shows, I'm 99.9% sure a machine could be designed and built that can do this step cheaper and faster than a 10 year old child can. The machine would have a higher up front cost than getting a kid from a poor country to do it so might not be economical if the amount of waste is below a certain amount but that's only a temporary situation.
toiletfuneral 5y ago
Don’t worry, the 10 year old will probably drown in the next 20 years from sea level changes as a result of you smugly burning petrol.
rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
Yet, https://www.redwoodmaterials.com https://www.redwoodmaterials.com wants to build their factories as close as EV ones'. Wonder why?
seventytwo 5y ago
And this is why we need a carbon tax. This “very efficient Audi” driver is also freely polluting without paying for it. There’s no reason why we should allow people to freely dump stuff into the air any more than dumping stuff on the ground should be freely allowed.
908B64B197 5y ago
The real question is how much work is it to recondition the cells. Does it need re-smelting at all?
amai 5y ago
You would be right if diesel would be growing on trees and be sold in every organic food.
Cosmin_C 5y ago
Unfortunately, not a lot of people know about the fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms. And even fewer people will know about batteries. I did some napkin math with a friend of mine over coffee and we concluded that just by being brough into existence and to the showroom floor a BMW i3 is equivalent from a pollution point of view to my diesel Ford having done 200.000 miles (I'm nowhere near that). But people buy electric vehicles in droves since they're government subsidized and what not - albeit this is another bait and switch, it's not forever and charging isn't free either, plus quality overall is quite lacking, not to mention the OTA updates and potential data mining coming from these cars being oversized smartphones with wheels. I dread the moment governments will up and force everybody to give up their old but reliable and not really hardcore polluting cars - a petrol/diesel vehicle doesn't do anything when it's off even if it's been like that for 20-30 years, an electric car may require to be always plugged in, trickle charging to keep the battery fed so in the winter you don't go to your garage and find out your range is actually 1/2 of what was expected. Not to mention nobody actually knows how long electric vehicles really last, whilst it's not uncommon for people having had the same ICE car for 30+ years.
- thinkcontext 5y ago
  > ... we concluded that just by being brough into existence and to the showroom floor a BMW i3 is equivalent from a pollution point of view to my diesel Ford having done 200.000 miles (I'm nowhere near that). Did it ever occur to you that maybe someone had looked into this before? Actually, lots of someones with PHDs have and find the opposite of you. Not only that companies are staking $10Bs on developing EVs, do you think they haven't looked at this either? Does that make you curious enough to read what they have written and see if perhaps your napkin model might not be accurate or are you content to be secure in your conclusion? Here's a few if you are interested https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-... https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/downloads/T%26E%E2%80%99s%20EV%20life%20cycle%20analysis%20LCA.pdf https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/download... https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/cleaner-cars-cradle-grave https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/cleaner-cars-cradle-grave
vkou 5y ago
And how do similar components of your car get disposed of? What do you think is going to happen to its catalytic converter, for instance? That you mention wind turbine blades leads me to think that this is less about being ethically conscious, and more about having a ciltural axe to grind against 'green' tech.
titzer 5y ago
I was right there with you until this: > diesel car Just a little reminder, the planet's gonna be on fire if we don't reach carbon neutrality ASAP.

jurip 5y ago

Is the fibre glass thing actually a disaster? According to this Bloomberg article https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... it sounds more like something that would be nice to reduce but is pretty far from a disaster: “Wind turbine blades at the end of their operational life are landfill-safe, unlike the waste from some other energy sources, and represent a small fraction of overall U.S. municipal solid waste,” according to an emailed statement from the group. It pointed to an Electric Power Research Institute study that estimates all blade waste through 2050 would equal roughly .015% of all the municipal solid waste going to landfills in 2015 alone.

pfdietz 5y ago
The idea that wind turbine blades need to be recycled is more of a fetish than a requirement.
Malic 5y ago
It does appear there is a solution for this on the way. https://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-science/wind-turbine-maker-vestas-unveils-new-blade-recycling-technology/article https://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-science/wind-turbine-mak... TL;DR: It appears Vestas is partnering up with another company to bring to market a process to break down the epoxy resins that bind the fiberglass in the blades. The resulting base chemicals are useful for the production of further resins and new windmill blades. This process could be useful in other industries.
toss1 5y ago
Yes, this is considered a problem, but not a disaster. As wind blades multiply and start to age out, this is already being worked on very strongly in the composites industry, and there are major breakthroughs[e.g., 1,2]. This should not be a disaster in the future [1] https://electrek.co/2021/04/26/a-scottish-university-finds-new-life-for-old-wind-turbine-blades/ https://electrek.co/2021/04/26/a-scottish-university-finds-n... [2] https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1716110/vestas-develops-gamechanger-wind-blade-recycling-method https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1716110/vestas-deve...
ArcFeind 5y ago
Can turbine blades be used as sunken fake reefs? They're big and hollow, could be a good place to nuture nature?

dmitryminkovsky 5y ago

> 4. Crushed and pounded with a rock by a 10 year old child, then burned in a rudimentary smelter to separate metals from plastics. https://youtu.be/wzJI8gfpu5Y?t=2317 https://youtu.be/wzJI8gfpu5Y?t=2317, cue children at https://youtu.be/wzJI8gfpu5Y?t=2364 https://youtu.be/wzJI8gfpu5Y?t=2364

iExploder 5y ago
exactly that. politicians and visionaries with big ideas about green future are one side of the story the other is the implementation and how it works in practice. thrash tends to conveniently vanish into the 3rd world or east europe, where it gets burned or poisons the environment.
Ddkkjfj 5y ago
People are aware of this bit it doesn't fit in the narrative for ev Akkus. Those are not broke after 5-10 year of usage. Small cells might be broken but replaceable and if not used for cars we still can and will use them for power storage. And then we can recycle them.
- dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
  > Small cells might be broken but replaceable You think this is the kind of thing people will do in reality? Will there be economic incentive for this activity? > And then we can recycle them. What will the recycling look like? Any idea if it’ll be a net carbon negative?
  - Forbo 5y ago
    > Will there be economic incentive for this activity? Pay several thousand to replace the entire battery pack, or pay some fraction to replace the bad cells? Seems pretty clear to me. > Any idea if it’ll be a net carbon negative? Doesn't need to be carbon negative, it just needs to be less bad than what we're doing currently with ICE.
    - 5y ago

StavrosK 5y ago

> Battery powered cars are going to be the next disaster > I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. "Battery powered cars are a small disaster, so I'll keep my big disaster instead".

daniellarusso 5y ago
It uses waste vegetable oil.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  Unless I drive to a specific gas station to get 100% recycled fuel, the normal diesel only has 10-20% such products, and likely less in summer. It's not nothing and certainly better than just a few years ago, but it's still not exactly like a significant fraction of diesels use a significant fraction of vegetable oil.
- cduzz 5y ago
  This is a laudable and reasonable small scale approach to personal transportation. There are certainly enough old diesels out there and enough people willing to go around collecting old oil to keep a small number of people occupied and mobile. It is also not really a viable large scale solution to "how do you move people around?" There are lots of really good answers (walking, public transit, electric bicycles) but one obvious answer is "cars" and electrifying those is probably a good solution. Electricity can be generated from fossil fuels more efficiently at large scales than small (a power plant produces less CO2 than a car for a given amount of work). Electricity can also be generated by extracting "free" energy from the environment (wind / solar / hydro / dogs on treadmills). The distribution system for electricity is already quite robust and is already everywhere, and people like cars. There's even lots of inexpensive electricity available at night, when most people aren't driving their cars. All we need is a way to get the power to the cars that park where people don't own the parking space. Disposing of the waste stream of parts of the cars has always been a problem. Hopefully people come up with a way to solve it; there's enough valuable metal in a car battery that it is likely they will. There are already all sorts of terrifying industrial processes which I can't imagine are possibly cost effective and yet they're the foundation of modern society. There are also all sorts of hideous "farm out the cost to someone else" processes relying on destroying somewhere else / poisoning someone else. People refine gasoline by boiling crude oil in a rusting metal tank; people refine gasoline in trillion dollar oil refineries. Why and where and for who answers how it gets done. Can one cost-effectively convert refined materials in a battery (cobalt / nickle / lithium) back into raw inputs for a new battery? Can it be done profitably by a child in a toxic fire pit or can it be done profitably by a chilled shredder in inert gas? Not a simple problem, but probably one that can partially be solved with market incentives and partially solved by laws and partially it won't get solved. But we should probably try, right?

ninjamayo 5y ago

...which will go through a similar disassembly process and also pollute the environment for as long as it lives.

paulcole 5y ago

The good thing is that there are going to be so many disasters that the car battery disposal disaster will likely get lost in the shuffle. Full disclosure: I am long TSLA.

rhaps0dy 5y ago

> fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms What's the problem with burying blades in a landfill? They don't degrade, OK, but rocks also don't degrade. - They're too big to drift to the ocean and be ingested by animals, which is the problem with plastic objects. - They don't leak nasty stuff into the groundwater, because landfills are lined properly to prevent that. Also fibreglass is pretty much inert.

squarefoot 5y ago
Do fiberglass degrade to a point it can't be recycled? We already use it for multiple things, from boats to PCBs, so there would be quite a big market. Any reasons why it shouldn't or couldn't be recycled?
- pfdietz 5y ago
  It shouldn't be recycled if it's a net economic loss to do so.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
    This line of thought got us global warming, micro plastic contamination of all of earth's water, pfas, a hole in the ozone, etc.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      I am assuming the negative externalities are included in the cost. What is the negative externality of not recycling turbine blades?
    - imtringued 5y ago
      Sending plastic waste overseas was an idea of the recycling zealots (people who recycle even in situations where it is worse).
    - epistasis 5y ago
      No, we got those problems because we didn't evaluate the environmental costs of these technologies, or ignored the people who did evaluate them. What is the environmental cost of burying fiberglass wind turbine blades versus recycling them? What is the environmental cost of not building these wind turbines right now, as fast as we possible can, and stopping the extraction of fossil fuels as fast as we possibly can? Extremely real, the extinction of hundreds of thousands of species, massive disruption to all habitats, including those of us humans. We have a narrow path to averting the worst effects of climate change. The worst threat to actually enacting change is the sort of false concern that keeps us on our present course driving off the cliff.

legutierr 5y ago

It seems rather inefficient for the batteries to be shipped overseas and for their materials to be extracted by 10 year olds, rather than to just have the batteries be recycled in the country where they are used.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
There aren't any 10 year olds in Western countries who are available to do the work. More seriously, global shipping at scale is ridiculously cheap. This site currently shows a rate of $987 to ship a 20' container from NYC to Jakarta: https://www.icontainers.com/ship-container/indonesia/ https://www.icontainers.com/ship-container/indonesia/
- tssva 5y ago
  I would think older children would be better for the work. 10 year olds should be used for task where their smaller size is an asset.
  - davidgould 5y ago
    Perhaps, but you have to feed older ones more.
cblconfederate 5y ago
but it's cheaper
sect2k 5y ago
Because it's cheaper to have them shipped to a third world country, where there is little to no environmental regulation and worker protection, then the alternative.
- legutierr 5y ago
  Cars aren't consumer electronics. Ordinary people don't just throw them away—they are usually traded-in to dealers—and most companies don't have big fleets that get replaced every few years, like companies replace their computer systems and other devices. Car parts are overall more expensive, and installation, replacement and even disposal happens through specialized entities, typically. Most maintenance work is done by manufacturers or dealers themselves. In other words, it's not inevitable that car battery systems would necessarily be sent overseas the same way that consumer electronics are when they reach end of life. With lower volume and more centralization, regulation will be easier to implement and enforce. And the economics may also make it cheaper for initial recycling to be situated in the originating country as well, given that the parts are more valuable and given the economies of scale that emerge from centralized reclamation networks. Already in the US there is a healthy industry of third-party businesses that will replace hybrid car batteries and reclaim the old systems for refurbishment. Most of the reclaimed systems are refurbished and re-used. There's no reason to think that with proper regulation and standardization an efficient & environmentally-safe reclamation market cannot emerge in first-world countries, preventing car battery waste from spilling over to third-world countries.

lmilcin 5y ago

While I agree this scenario is representative to what is likely to happen if nobody reacts, I don't agree that it must necessarily happen or that is a reason to stay on petrol cars. The difference between batteries and petrol is that batteries can be reprocessed. The problem is unless we do something (set up regulation) it is likely the unregulated way in which it is going to happen will cost a huge pollution and suffering. Think in terms of lead and lead-acid batteries specifically. There is a mandated system (at least here in EU) that tries to prevent the components of lead acid batteries to get back into environment. For example, when I want to buy a replacement battery I can't throw the old one in the trash and I am expected to exchange the old one for the new one and pay extra if I want to only buy new one without giving away the old. Is it too hard to think we can do something like that for the huge card batteries which are much less disposable than the lead acid ones?

Clubber 5y ago
>Is it too hard to think we can do something like that for the huge card batteries which are much less disposable than the lead acid ones? Who is we? I don't remember being able to vote for any politicians that are interested in this sort of thing. Hydrogen cell cars are probably the best option for the future. It's very abundant naturally and its byproduct is H2O. We have to figure out how to mass produce it though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnzuuLpYFVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnzuuLpYFVg
- lmilcin 5y ago
  > Who is we? We, the People? Isn't that the whole point of democracy?
  - Clubber 5y ago
    Lol. Yes, yes. And cops are the good guys and drug users are evil. I remember all this from elementary school too.
    - lmilcin 5y ago

DominikD 5y ago

Good thing that German diesels had no scandals of their own! ;)

sobellian 5y ago
Yes and instead of employing ten year olds we get to transact with all the famously ethical and benevolent regimes that control most of the global oil supply ;)

spoiledtechie 5y ago

Exactly what I was going to say.

hannob 5y ago

> Battery powered cars are going to be the next disaster, after the fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms. Serious question: What is the fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms? I googled for it and I didn't find it. There's currently no way to recycle these, ok. They usually end up in landfills or incinerators. It's not ideal and we can hope that better technologies will come up in the future. But that's not really what I'd call a scandal.

ehnto 5y ago
Surely it would be as bad that there are countless boat hulls, kayaks, canoes, surf boards, childrens playgrounds, car aero, outdoor furniture ... you get the picture. Windfarms are hardly the source of the most fibreglass and it is at least relatively inert as waste. No green energy is truly green or perfect, but we aren't aiming for perfect we just want better.
hutzlibu 5y ago
You might want to call it a scandal, if you want to find reasons of being opossed to regenerative energies in general. Otherwise it is a mere technical problem calling for a better solution than what is avaiable right now.
mothsonasloth 5y ago
Its not a scandal yet! Because we are approaching a cliff when a lot of 1st and 2nd generation wind turbines are about to be decommissioned or refurbished. Note: this is for Scotland. Its bad enough a single wind turbine blade requiring a convoy escort along small winding roads for installation. Now they have to do the same and dispose them. The cost is going to have to be paid somewhere, most likely by consumers. Or they will be disposed off cheaply in a bad way.
- nagrom 5y ago
  Why wouldn't they cut the blade up in situ for transportation at the end of its working life? Seems better than having huge convoys to take them away for recycling.
- 5y ago

ehnto 5y ago

Fibre glass is far more widely spread than in windfarms. Is there a particularly troubling aspect in the way windfarms use it?

credit_guy 5y ago

> I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. I did not have a point of reference to see in what sense this is efficient or not, so I checked how much CO2 humans exhale. It turns out your car emits about as much as 2 humans exhale. Here's the math: - car: on average people drive about 10000 kilometers/year in the UK [1], so if you drive like an average person in the UK, your car puts out 790 kg of CO2 in a year - humans: on average people exhale about 2.3 pounds of CO2 per day [2]. That makes about 762 kg/year for 2 people [1]https://www.thecarcrashdetective.com/americans-drive-more-dying/ https://www.thecarcrashdetective.com/americans-drive-more-dy... [2] https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/waiting-exhale https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/waiting-exhale

oddeyed 5y ago
Not necessarily comparable for purposes of global heating effect (not sure if that's what you're doing or not). The CO2 that a human exhales is from the carbon in the food they consume. That carbon ultimately comes (whether indirectly via animals or not) from plants, which drew that CO2 out of the air directly, typically at most a few years prior. The net change in CO2 concentration is zero. Contrast this to burning fossil fuels which moves carbon from places where it is not enhancing the greenhouse effect (e.g. it's in coal, gas wells or crude oil) into the atmosphere where it will cause global heating - a net increase in CO2 concentration. As a side note, methane produced by livestock or food waste does still have a global heating effect as CH4 is a more "potent" greenhouse gas than CO2, so there is a net increase in heating potential due to this conversion.
hutzlibu 5y ago
What you should not forget is, that CO2 isn't the only gas emitted by diesel cars. Gases and dust, that are a serious health hazard en masse in cities. Also I doubt that the 79g/100km is the full number, that includes drilling for, refining and transporting that diesel to your car, before you can burn it there. And btw., those kids in africa are poisening themself with ICE car parts too. So I don't think anyone said, we should all wreck our ice cars today and go all electric immediately. That clearly makes no sense ressource wise. But in the long run, yes. I want noise, smoke, fumes and dust free cities as soon as possible, along with a somewhat stable and intact environment. You have to start somewhere.

canadianfella 5y ago

This is satire right?

CAT0 5y ago

Not in the EU. The Batteries Regulation signed the December 10th 2020 aims to ensure that batteries placed in the EU market are sustainable and safe throughout their entire life cycle. https://ec.europa.eu/environment/topics/waste-and-recycling/batteries-and-accumulators_en https://ec.europa.eu/environment/topics/waste-and-recycling/...

kybernetyk 5y ago
Yeah, the mafia cares about EU regulations. Or so I've heard...
- baq 5y ago
  the mafia doesn't make batteries.
  - kybernetyk 5y ago
    But they do waste "disposal" https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/trash-worth-millions-of-euros https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/trash-worth-mill...
    - baq 5y ago
      oh for sure, not denying that. but - regulation should make the good thing easy: battery construction rules must require ease of recycling and recycling itself should be the easy default option in practice, not just on paper. it can be done. no profit for the mafia left in that case.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

I get that this is a problem, but comparing it to oil as being the better alternative is not convincing: oil have been at the center of terrible wars, corruptions and ecological disasters for decades. Entire populations have been displaced, robbed, poisoned, conned and/or killed for oil. Let's not pretend it comes with less suffering attached, not to mention we had almost a century to improve the process, and we are comparing it to electrical cars, something that had been barely marketable to the public for 10 years.

worldsayshi 5y ago

> Battery powered cars are going to be the next disaster, after the fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms. > I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. Why are you framing this as being a particular problem for electric cars and wind farms? It sounds like a problem that encompasses all of global trade, manufacturing and modern technology.

ppf 5y ago
>It sounds like a problem that encompasses all of global trade, manufacturing and modern technology. It is, which is why it is absurd on its face that supposedly more "sustainable" solutions to transport and electricity generation increase all three of those.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 5y ago
  It's not facially absurd,maybe the math won't pan out but humanity needs to get off fossil fuels or face an uninhabitable earth.
  - ppf 5y ago
    It is absurd on its face to have developing countries burn oil and (usually low-grade) coal to manufacture huge battery packs (and all the other electronic items that our Western lives dictate), all so we can claim we live CO2-neutral lives. You might be right, but EVs are not the solution. The solution is realising that we just can't use so much energy.
    - js8 5y ago
      Actually, EVs are (at least part of) a solution. Electric motors are more efficient than internal combustion engines, and even more efficient if you also count all the oil extraction, processing and transport. Of course we need to move from burning coal too, but EVs are absolutely part of that.
      - 5y ago

gambiting 5y ago

>>I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) The thing is, we realized some time ago that CO2 emissions are not all that matters in a car, and your diesel is spewing very harmful NOx emissions whever you drive, plus if you haven't got a DPF(I don't know how old your car is) the amount of fine particulate matter that is proven to be dangerous to health is quite high as well.

zthrowaway 5y ago

Also the pollution that is created to make the batteries and also to generate the additional electricity demand on coal power plants to charge all the cars. Auto makers are just selling the feeling of doing something good for the environment to consumers because that’s what is in vogue.

FriedrichN 5y ago

>I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. I bet that's the exact reason why you drive that exact car. Because of course the coolant, oil, acid batteries, etc. your car uses is disposed of correctly, or one of the hundreds of parts that needs replacing every X amount of time in an ICE. Never mind the waste that oil production itself causes. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/01/fossil-fuel-cars-make-hundreds-of-times-more-waste-than-electric-cars https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/01/fossil-fuel... New modes of transportation and energy generation will not be 100% clean and waste free, I think it would be naive to think we could actually do that. But they can be steps in the right direction. If your cynical assumption is that we can't do it right anyway, why do you even pretend that driving your old car is somehow better? If we won't dispose of lithium batteries properly, we won't dispose of all the things your old car produces either.

ppf 5y ago
Old oil is processed and re-used (as cheaper oil, or for heating). Lead-acid batteries have practically all of the lead re-used. I'm not sure where the acid itself, nor coolant, goes, but they're not the most damaging of pollutants. >one of the hundreds of parts that needs replacing every X amount of time in an ICE Yep, it's usually one of the electronic parts, which is why I have no faith that EVs will be significantly more reliable.
- FriedrichN 5y ago
  > Old oil is processed and re-used (as cheaper oil, or for heating) Or illegally dumped if we follow OPs cynical reasoning. > it's usually one of the electronic parts I didn't know tubes, gaskets, seals, clutches, oil filters, spark plugs, fuel pumps, radiators, alternators were electronic parts. I am not claiming EVs are perfect but to propose classical ICE vehicles are somehow much better simply does not make any sense. To exist as a modern human is to have an impact on your environment.
  - ppf 5y ago
    Those are all relatively inert parts, and scrap steel and aluminium is relatively easily extracted. I didn't set out to argue that ICE vehicles are much better (although, honestly, I think it might be a defensible position), but the waste products from an end-of-life EV are significantly more damaging than those from an ICE.

anovikov 5y ago

What's wrong about it? As long as materials are not wasted.

ed_balls 5y ago

> Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks If CO2 was the problem, diesels would be fine. We would recapture CO2 in the future. The bigger problem is particulates and NOx

bumbada 5y ago

Not really. Batteries like AAA are already being recycled because it makes economical sense. In fact thieves steal it and need vigilance. You are confused with "electrical components" that are mostly plastic, very hard to disassemble and not worth it economically. A Tesla battery cost over $6000. Materials like Cobalt or Lithium are worth a lot in a concentrated form, much easier than extracting it from the mine. As technology improves, the metals in those batteries are worth more. So what is going to happen is: Short term: people will use their old car batteries for electrical network support. Medium term: Governments are going to require recycling protocols like they already do with ICEs cars. Long term: Companies will develop protocols to recycle it. A battery is the same thing repeated hundreds of times. The individual cells are standardized,and platforms will be shared between different manufacturers, that makes it way easier to recycle.

sokoloff 5y ago
> Batteries like AAA are already being recycled because it makes economical sense. Are they? My depleted AAA alkalines go straight in the trash (which is the direction of our fairly green-friendly city of Cambridge, MA). * - https://www.cambridgema.gov/Services/householdhazardouswastedisposal#!rc-cpage=252958 https://www.cambridgema.gov/Services/householdhazardouswaste...
- rjsw 5y ago
  > our fairly green-friendly city of Cambridge, MA Everything is relative, they don't go in the trash anywhere I know in Europe.
  - rapnie 5y ago
    > anywhere I know I was recently quite disillusioned about that by the series "The Vuilnisman" (The Garbage Man) in The Netherlands, where point for point the entire responsible waste disposal and recycling was shown to be mostly a paper reality. For instance numerous tricks exist to label trash as building material and it can be dumped anywhere for a good profit. If only we knew.

Ddkkjfj 5y ago

You mean that right? Like you really think a big Akku from a ev is economically so irrelevant that we will ship it to Africa? Fixing them (if a cell is broken) is easy and we can use them for 10 years more. No one will just give it away and I bet that in Africa they would fix cells and use it for energy storage as well. Your car is not just shitty for our climate your exhaust is also polluting the air we breathe

moondistance 5y ago

They will increasingly go to Li-Cycle [1] and similar. The tech is still not perfect, but it's much better than the historical norm. [1] https://li-cycle.com/ https://li-cycle.com/

ByronFortescue 5y ago
Similar company in this space, very promising, saw it in action and it's quite simple in essence but very scalable because of that. https://www.relectrify.com/ https://www.relectrify.com/

wiz21c 5y ago

Keeping your car much longer is actually a good idea : the more you keep it the less likely you'll buy another one. Not buying a car looks like the best solution to me.

dpierce9 5y ago

I don’t think your carbon footprint math is right. Every liter of diesel burnt produces about 2.35Kg (a gallon produces about 20lbs) of CO2. This would imply your diesel gets 30km/liter or 70mpg which seems awfully high. Audi’s current, most efficient (US) models are less than half that. You might also care about NOx, SOx, and particulates as well. The diesel is an utter failure as far as particulates go.

KozmoNau7 5y ago
It could be an A2 3L, which shares the drivetrain etc. with the VW Lupo 3L, so named because it used just 3L of diesel per 100km (under ideal conditions, of course). I don't know of any current Audis with similar repeatable fuel economy.

tibbydudeza 5y ago

> Crushed and pounded with a rock by a 10 year old child, then burned in a rudimentary smelter to separate metals from plastics. Yep - e-cycling all our old iPads'/iPhones/PC's with the entire village inhaling all those toxic fumes and polluting the groundwater.

poopypoopington 5y ago

Which Audi do you have?

JTbane 5y ago

>I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. Diesel vehicles emit a lot more NO2, as well as particulates that damage the lungs. Sure, it's less CO2 than gasoline cars, but is it worth it for urban air quality?

BitwiseFool 5y ago

If you actually want to see what these places look like, read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie

tuatoru 5y ago

> I'll keep my very efficient Audi diesel car (79g/km CO2) for now thanks. Diesel exhaust is a concentrated source of sub-micron teratogenic particles. You're increasing your family members' cancer risk. Against this you have a made-up fantasy. There is every reason to believe Li-ion vehicle batteries will be recycled as effectively and safely as lead-acid vehicle batteries.

tzs 5y ago

> 4. Crushed and pounded with a rock by a 10 year old child, then burned in a rudimentary smelter to separate metals from plastics. I'm certainly no mechanical engineering or robotics expert, but based on watching a bazillion episodes of "How It's Made", "Modern Marvels", and similar shows, I'm 99.9% sure a machine could be designed and built that can do this step cheaper and faster than a 10 year old child can. The machine would have a higher up front cost than getting a kid from a poor country to do it so might not be economical if the amount of waste is below a certain amount but that's only a temporary situation.

toiletfuneral 5y ago

Don’t worry, the 10 year old will probably drown in the next 20 years from sea level changes as a result of you smugly burning petrol.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago

Yet, https://www.redwoodmaterials.com https://www.redwoodmaterials.com wants to build their factories as close as EV ones'. Wonder why?

seventytwo 5y ago

And this is why we need a carbon tax. This “very efficient Audi” driver is also freely polluting without paying for it. There’s no reason why we should allow people to freely dump stuff into the air any more than dumping stuff on the ground should be freely allowed.

908B64B197 5y ago

The real question is how much work is it to recondition the cells. Does it need re-smelting at all?

amai 5y ago

You would be right if diesel would be growing on trees and be sold in every organic food.

Cosmin_C 5y ago

Unfortunately, not a lot of people know about the fibre glass disposal scandal of wind farms. And even fewer people will know about batteries. I did some napkin math with a friend of mine over coffee and we concluded that just by being brough into existence and to the showroom floor a BMW i3 is equivalent from a pollution point of view to my diesel Ford having done 200.000 miles (I'm nowhere near that). But people buy electric vehicles in droves since they're government subsidized and what not - albeit this is another bait and switch, it's not forever and charging isn't free either, plus quality overall is quite lacking, not to mention the OTA updates and potential data mining coming from these cars being oversized smartphones with wheels. I dread the moment governments will up and force everybody to give up their old but reliable and not really hardcore polluting cars - a petrol/diesel vehicle doesn't do anything when it's off even if it's been like that for 20-30 years, an electric car may require to be always plugged in, trickle charging to keep the battery fed so in the winter you don't go to your garage and find out your range is actually 1/2 of what was expected. Not to mention nobody actually knows how long electric vehicles really last, whilst it's not uncommon for people having had the same ICE car for 30+ years.

thinkcontext 5y ago
> ... we concluded that just by being brough into existence and to the showroom floor a BMW i3 is equivalent from a pollution point of view to my diesel Ford having done 200.000 miles (I'm nowhere near that). Did it ever occur to you that maybe someone had looked into this before? Actually, lots of someones with PHDs have and find the opposite of you. Not only that companies are staking $10Bs on developing EVs, do you think they haven't looked at this either? Does that make you curious enough to read what they have written and see if perhaps your napkin model might not be accurate or are you content to be secure in your conclusion? Here's a few if you are interested https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-... https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/downloads/T%26E%E2%80%99s%20EV%20life%20cycle%20analysis%20LCA.pdf https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/download... https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/cleaner-cars-cradle-grave https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/cleaner-cars-cradle-grave

vkou 5y ago

And how do similar components of your car get disposed of? What do you think is going to happen to its catalytic converter, for instance? That you mention wind turbine blades leads me to think that this is less about being ethically conscious, and more about having a ciltural axe to grind against 'green' tech.

titzer 5y ago

I was right there with you until this: > diesel car Just a little reminder, the planet's gonna be on fire if we don't reach carbon neutrality ASAP.