SWANA Scholarship Essay

Last updated Aug 8, 2022

The following is an essay I wrote for SWANA’s (Solid Waste Association of North America) Grant H. Flint Scholarship. This essay helped me place in the national competition. Here is the essay:

Write an essay about the role some aspect of solid waste management (e.g education, recycling, food waste recovery, composting, landfilling, etc.) plays in addressing an environmental issue currently in the news. What are the responsibilities of individuals who generate the waste (including producers/manufacturers and consumers) versus the professionals tasked with managing the waste?

Resource Recycling Systems estimates that up to 92% of lithium ion batteries are improperly disposed of. Lithium ion batteries in landfills leak hazardous chemicals into soil and water such as mercury and lead. What’s more, according to the EPA, 245 fires occurred in recycling centers across the United States from 2013-2020 started by lithium ion batteries. These fires eject toxic fumes, halt operations for long periods of times, cost centers millions of dollars, destroy whole facilities, and in worse case scenarios hurt people. To make matters worse, lack of recycling lithium ion batteries means that new materials must be mined to keep up with demand. According to Li-Cycle, a lithium ion battery recycling company, one ton of recycled batteries eliminates five tons of carbon dioxide emissions and 96 tons of contaminated water produced from mining. With lithium ion production set to increase exponentially, due to expanding industries such as electric vehicles, the problem of disposal must be solved before it gets bigger. I propose a solution with three parts: education, accountability, and improved recycling infrastructure.

The education component, which may be the easiest to start and the hardest to finish, entails educating the general public on proper disposal of lithium ion batteries. When I asked my peers how to dispose of batteries they didn’t know nor knew the effects of improper disposal. People must know whether to take batteries to local disposal sites, to stores that sell them, or if they can throw them away. I propose that education must be done at the point of purchase, during use, and at disposal. To do this product packaging, batteries themselves, and waste bins must be labeled with proper disposal methods. Without education of consumers on proper disposal no other solutions can be implemented effectively because batteries won’t be where they need to be. Therefore it has to be started before anything else and continue until hazardous batteries are no longer commonplace.

The next part is holding battery manufacturers responsible for end-of-life disposal. Producers profit from the production of these hazardous batteries and currently leave local governments and citizens to foot the bill for disposal. I believe manufacturers or product sellers should have a significant responsibility to ensure safe disposal of these hazardous products. They cannot be allowed to benefit at the expense of our environment and recycling centers. And shouldn’t be able to spread their costs to the taxpayers without some oversight. We need corporations to make disposal convenient, obvious, and incentivized. Buy back programs funded by the sale of batteries along with requiring sellers to accept used batteries for disposal should be part of the solution. Some states already have examples of this type of solution. For example, in California, a shop that does oil changes must accept used oil from local citizens. Making proper disposal convenient, obvious, and the responsibility of the product seller must be part of the solution to ensure most batteries are recycled instead of improperly disposed.

Now that we have batteries in the right place we need to recycle them. Some companies will have the economies of scale to do it themselves. Others will need a third party to do the recycling to collectively reach the scale where it is cost effective. Some private companies are already attempting to capitalize on this opportunity, but the investment thus far has not kept up with rapidly increasing production. I think the government must do more to invest in developing resilient recycling infrastructure and fund development of better recycling methods. I would love to see a system, like “Operation Warp Speed” for COVID-19 (which identified candidates with promising vaccination innovations), created for battery recycling to give a boost to new recycling technology development, with the requirement that the innovations be made open to all. This problem is more urgent than the current investment.

Like the legs of a three legged stool, together education, accountability, and improved recycling infrastructure can dramatically increase lithium ion battery recycling now and in the future, which will decrease the environmental hazards of leakage, fires, and excessive mining. I want these solutions implemented so we can all live in a cleaner, safer, happier world.