The ~50% recycled percentage is steady-state. Same for 80% of raw
lead going into battery production. These percentages have not changed
substantially for 50 years. (The percentage of raw lead going into
battery production has actually grown to more than 85% in recent years.)
In order for lead-acid battery recycling to be 95%, there would
have to be 25% growth in the number of batteries in service (or storage,
or whatever.) This is a _lot_ of batteries. _*One quarter*_ of _*all*_
lead acid batteries produced every year! Two million tons of batteries.
There is simply no way that "nearly 100%" of lead acid batteries
are recycled. It is a good story, but if you simply look at the lead
industries own figures, it doesn't hold water.
https://www.ila-lead.org/lead-facts/lead-production--statistics
https://www.ila-lead.org/lead-facts/lead-uses--statistics
The key is that the percentage has remained the same for many many
years. There aren't non-polluting "reservoirs", (like hoards of used
batteries in homes,) that are building steady for years and years at
25%. Folks /eventually/ do "something" with dead lead-acid batteries.
The truth is, many get tossed in the land fill, especially the smaller
ones, like UPS batteries, emergency light batteries, alarm batteries, etc.
Bill D.
On 11/21/2019 9:26 AM, Mr. Sharkey via EV wrote:
> More to the point, lead-acid batteries are not recycled at "nearly
100%" as
> claimed. If you look at the numbers provided by the lead industry
itself, at
> _least_ 30% of them escape the recycling stream
Hopefully, whoever does this sort of bean counting took into account
the number of batteries still in useful service, and adjusted for
those that are still installed in inoperable or stored equipment and
vehicles that will eventually return them for recycling.
There is also a portion of lead, which includes batteries, that gets
shunted to other uses outside the recycling stream. Private reuse of
lead for ammunition, nautical ballast, etc might account for some of
the discrepancy. I suspect that there may also be some hoarding of
lead for speculative purposes, and by preppers who worry about the
zombie apocalypse
With commodity prices being what they are, and active gathering and
recycling of scrap, including non-ferrous metals, by a wide selection
of citizenry, I can't see 30% of batteries being dumped in rivers, etc.
Home Power magazine did a couple of in-depth, first-person articles on
lead battery recycling some years back. While not absolutely
definitive, it represents some independent research on the subject. If
anyone is interested, I can rip and post some PDF's or dig up links to
the articles on the HP web site.
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