Why a lithium-ion battery recycling event is coming to Broome County Aug. 13
Redwood Materials, a lithium-ion battery recycling company, is partnering with the Endwell Rotary Club to host a recycling event for batteries and consumer devices.
The event will be hosted at Northminster Presbyterian Church, 711 Farm-to-Market Road, Endwell, on Saturday, Aug. 13 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The event is part of the first-ever East Coast recycling campaign by Redwood Materials, which was founded by JB Straubel, the co-founder and former CTO of Tesla. Redwood Materials is building a $3.5 billion plant in Nevada to produce the materials necessary to make rechargeable battery cells for electric vehicles.
Those materials are found in all manner of household items, like cell phones, laptops and electric toothbrushes. Redwood Materials hopes to create a closed-loop domestic supply chain for lithium-ion batteries that will drive down the environmental footprint of electric vehicles.
“The largest lithium and cobalt mines in the northern hemisphere are found in America’s junk drawers,” said Sonja Koch, Redwood Materials Consumer Program Manager. “We’re all kind of guilty of that. I have three old iPhones sitting in my drawer. I don’t really have an easy pathway to recycle them. It’s a hassle and it’s a burden for a lot of people. We end up just stockpiling all this stuff.”
Koch noted that Americans throw out over 150 million cell phones every year and only 17% of consumer electronics are recycled responsibly. That waste has major supply chain implications for an industry in which demand has far outpaced supply.
Redwood’s recycling process recovers more than 95% of metals like nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper from batteries and uses them to remanufacture anode and cathode components. Those components are then supplied to U.S. battery cell manufacturers without the metals ever leaving the country.
Why the battery recycling event is coming to Broome County
Endwell Rotarian Jeff Smith is leading the local effort. Smith chairs the seven-county district’s environmental sustainability strategy and also leads the Tier Energy Network, a coalition focused on advancing the clean energy industry in the Southern Tier.
The Tier Energy Network supports entrepreneurs and clean energy technology companies.
Smith said a battery recycling event is a natural fit for Broome County given the area’s burgeoning lithium-ion ecosystem. Binghamton University is hoping to win $100 million in Build Back Better Regional Challenge funding to further charge up the industry, which includes a lithium-ion manufacturer, im3NY, on the Huron Campus in Endicott.
“It’s a big story. Any way we can promote that story and the region is a big benefit,” said Smith. “Recycling these batteries is pretty important, too. The materials will be recycled (back into) the battery industry. It’s a scarce product. The more we can recycle our own stuff, we help out on multiple fronts.”
Battery recycling was a hot topic in Endicott in 2020 and 2021 as SungEel MCC Americas proposed a lithium-ion battery recycling plant on the Huron Campus. Detractors claimed the process would be a source of toxic emissions near a residential area, while proponents of the project said the public health concerns were mischaracterized and the recycling plant would safely spark a much-needed economic boom for the village.
SungEel ultimately abandoned the project in 2021. Smith believes Redwood’s recycling campaign, in contrast, is something the entire region can get behind.
“I feel bad (SungEel) left because the U.S. has very little capability of recycling, but these are industrial processes. They’re complex. There will always be a lot of scrutiny,” said Smith. “(Redwood) has a licensed facility. Maybe if we had a different process we could be doing the recycling ourselves sometime in the future. I’d like to have the materials processed here for local use, but we’re not quite ready for that yet.”
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What to know if you go to the event
Koch said Redwood is working to scale up its operation and apply its technology to recover materials from small consumer devices just as it recovers metals from electric vehicle batteries.
Items that can be brought to the Endwell drop-off event include laptops, cell phones, tablets, power tools, cordless vacuum batteries, e-bike batteries, wireless headphones, video game controllers, vapes, electric toothbrushes and any other battery or device that is rechargeable.
The event will be a drive-through and Endwell Rotarians will be on hand to accept the recyclables. Smith said additional events may be held in the fall in Broome County and in Ithaca if the Aug. 13 event is a success.
Redwood’s East Coast launch also includes events in Boston and Cape Cod.
Chris Potter can be reached at cpotter@gannett.com or on Twitter @ChrisPotter413. To get unlimited access to the latest news, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
This article originally appeared on Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin: Lithium-ion battery recycling event coming to Broome County
