Ethical sources for lithium batteries?

[Garald]

I'm considering getting batteries in addition to a set of solar panels. A friend of mine sends me this link:

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01735-z

 

I'd heard before of problems associated to lithium batteries (pollution, sourcing in the DRC with all that implies, etc.). I suppose a cell phone doesn't make that much of a difference, but storing energy from a set of PV panels is on a different scale altogether.

 

What do people do about this question? Refurbished batteries maybe? Some sort of fair-trade sourcing?

[Cooeyswell]

6 minutes ago, Garald said:

I'm considering getting batteries in addition to a set of solar panels. A friend of mine sends me this link:

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01735-z

 

I'd heard before of problems associated to lithium batteries (pollution, sourcing in the DRC with all that implies, etc.). I suppose a cell phone doesn't make that much of a difference, but storing energy from a set of PV panels is on a different scale altogether.

 

What do people do about this question? Refurbished batteries maybe? Some sort of fair-trade sourcing?

 

This article refers to Lithium-Ion batteries. While these are used in some battery systems many others use Lithium-Iron-Phosphate (LFP) batteries.

LFP batteries do not use cobalt or nickel and are seen as a "cleaner" chemistry type albeit with a reduced energy density.

[frankmcs65]

Unfortunately, every sort of mass production leads to a critical equilibrium between mankind and environment....As long as there is not improved a proper recycling scheme and a fair and secure market of the prime materials in the first place,this will always be some trouble,especially for our future....The maybe only thing we can do apart from the choice where to buy from,is trying to treat our equipment as "good" as poss to ensure a long lifetime,trying to make up for the dirty buisness somehow🥶😰😱,Frank

[joe90]

22 minutes ago, frankmcs65 said:

maybe only thing we can do apart from the choice where to buy from,is trying to treat our equipment as "good" as poss to ensure a long lifetime,trying to make up for the dirty buisness somehow

Also to make things repairable. 

[SteamyTea]

The ethics of 'life' is such a complicated business.

While I am sure that in some circumstances child labour is used, it raises questions.

What is a child?

There is some basic information here, but I have not checked how accurate it is.

https://www.hcamag.com/us/news/general/your-guide-to-minimum-age-requirements-around-the-world/155912

So taking Sri Lanka, children can work at age 10, United Arab Emirates it is 21.

Now these are sovereign states, and is it ethical for the UK to interfere.

 

There is also the productivity side.  Mining, processing and manufacturing, even in developing countries, is now a high tech business.  12 years olds are not very productive.  Why would a company employ them.  I know that there are some crook than keep slaves, and others that may pay 'piece work', but it is not very productive.  But generally, you employ people that are useful, not ones that get in the way.

 

When considering the environmental damage, should we be comparing it to the best we already have, or what we most frequently use.  So taking energy production, natural gas is probably the best we have, and in Europe, probably the most used (certainly is in the UK).  So is it really a problem to dispose of a few tonnes of batteries until we have a viable recycling industry (which is already happening) when comparing it to just the atmospheric damage caused by methane leaks and carbon dioxide emissions.  Without a lot of data, and very serious statistical modelling, that answer is very hard find.

 

One way to value nature is to ask a series of questions to different groups of people.  We did this down here (a holiday area) about access to beaches when the National Trust took over a lot of the car parking areas.

Started off asking how often people visited the beach, then asked if the trip was solely to visit the beach or part of another trip.

Then we asked how they got there and how far they travelled.

Were they willing to pay to park near a beach.

After quite a long survey, we asked if people where willing to pay to access a beach, regardless of how they got there.  We also asked if they should be compensated, financially, for being denied access (that question was worded carefully and part of a 'scenario').

The conclusions were, if I remember correctly, was that local residence wanted totally free access, and would want to be compensated around £20/trip if denied, holiday makers were willing to pay £12 per visit, and were not bothered about compensation.

The actual cost of a visit to the beach was around £8 per person.  Though for many locals it was free i.e. a very short walk, and holiday makers it was a long journey.

 

My view is that we have to let the industry develop, accept that there will be some terrible mistakes (Bopal/Union Carbide has been in the news recently.learn from those mistakes, legislate as bets we can, then fine tune all the processes.

 

[Andehh]

My job! Huge push for recycling big batteries across Europe, to reduce reliance on China etc! They are 95% recoverable for all rare materials. It'll work, but will take time to get up and running. Until then most good brands will have ethical supply chain.

[Andehh]

Big batteries also last longer then most people realise providing temp extremes and charge speeds aren't abused!!