Battery disposal is an increasing problem with recycling. Two weeks ago a local recycle center caught fire. Seventeen fire departments were needed to get the fire out. $5,000,000 US damage to the facility. Security camera video shows the fire originating in the electronics part of the facility. Below are some links you may enjoy or find useful.

+++ Washington Post Article With Video +++

+++ Right To Repair Association +++

+++ I Fix It Bill Of Rights +++

“Thermal event”. Good one.

Apple, at a minimum, needs to make batteries replaceable, both for this reason and for user convenience.

Wouldn’t replaceable batteries result in even more being thrown away? Phones tend to be passed on or recycled. I’m assuming the batteries are the culprits.

Could be.

I’m thinking there would be two benefits:

Phones would be kept in use longer, and recycling centers could remove batteries without acting like the bomb squad.

There are a few interesting tidbits in the Washington Post article. There have been more than seven multi millon dollar fires at recycle centers around the world attributed to lithium batteries. Apple is not the only manufacturer that embeds lithium batteries within their products but, of the fires where the cause is known (video or other means), all were Apple devices. Apple does not provide any training or support to recycle centers for removing the batteries from any of their devices. Three device fires have occurred at the recycle center the Washington Post reporter visited, all were Apple devices. It takes a self-trained technician about forty minutes, a hot plate, silicon gloves, fireproof container and a fire resistant workbench to safely remove the battery from an Apple Ipad. The recycle center will recover about $1.50 of recyclable materials from the device.

I'm not hammering on Apple, it's just that their products are so popular everyone can easily understand the issue and they are one of the few companies that embed batteries instead of using replaceable batteries or battery packs. But heck, even the battery pack in a Telsa is replaceable.

One of the reasons I buy a Dell computer is because I can download a service manual and decide what I can fix and what's better for a technician to fix. I don't buy Toshiba anymore because I couldn't get service information. I've got service information on my lawn mower and on my digital camera. I can get it on my refrigerator, freezer, washer and dryer. I believe right to fix is a consumer right and companies are starting to realize some consumers want to be actively involved in their products.

It's called "planned obsolescence" and I'm not saying this is always a bad thing. In tech there's always some new great thing that's "almost" ready for prime time so there's pressure to wait until it's ready before they release the next big thing. Companies could keep waiting forever and go out of business under that scenario so someone makes the decision to draw the line at a certain point and start producing the new version.

One thing I don't understand is why does a tech need to manually remove the battery from an iPad if it's such a risk? Just throw 100 of them into a big shredder with solid steel walls. Those little batteries can sputter and spark all they want until they're little 1/16" pieces. I saw a documentary about a high tech recycling center where they used rotating steel hammers spinning on a roller to break stuff up and then a combination of magnets, chemicals, heat and water on several long conveyor belts with different sized holes separated out the different elements. For gold and silver it was able to produce a brick of slag that was shipped out to be smelted.

Bob

Bob, I saw that or a similar TV show with that shredder, perhaps on How It's Made or something like that. Fascinating. Worked just as you said.

I don't know the answer to your question and do not want to hazard a guess.

But that is just one symptom of a larger problem. Why aren't things designed to be fixed or recycled when they could easily be designed differently? Why have we become a throwaway society?

“Hazard” a guess? Good one.

Because that is the way the manufacturers want it.

Back in the old days we had repair shops and/or we could repair things ourselves. Those days are gone.

IMHO
Computers and such are far different animals than many historical products.
Technology moves much faster than hardware can support.

Eventually any system reaches a point where it's hardware capabilities can't keep up. So 'soldering/replacing a part' makes no sense; the whole system gets obsolete pretty quickly anyway.

It's not whether they 'could' make parts replaceable, but more a question of whether it is worth it for anyone in the long run.

In this day/age computers are not meant to be repaired for decades. For the price point we can get them at it is much more efficient to replace them, but then we do end up with a lot of waste.

We need a better way of handling the waste .. but that costs money. At this point, handling the cost of the waste is really the issue.

We can buy a new spiffy system for $450 .. but nothing in that cost covers the waste; that's the buyer's problem.

Recycling needs to be incorporated into manufacturer costs (and retail price adjustments) but nobody will like that solution either.either.

Very intriguing article, and some really points being brought up too.

I have a history with dangerous goods shipping at previous jobs. I have internationally shipped dry ice, compressed oxygen, bodily fluids/tissue - but the one that always astounded me was how dangerous lithium batteries actually can be. And they are sitting right there in your pocket day after day inside your phone. And in your laptop, your tablet, etc. The paperwork you need to fill out to put these on a plane is astounding, and when they blow up or catch on fire it is catastrophic.

Thankfully the odds are extremely incredibly low of anything happening like that, but it still interests me. Thanks for sharing!

I've seen this discussion come up a few times, and it's always interesting to see what everyone's perspective is on it. While I was away at Disney during the Safari they actually mention the mining process involved for getting some of the necessary elements for phone batteries and for other electronics and encouraged people to always recycling their phone batteries instead of throwing them out.

It never dawned on me to throw away old phones/batteries. I have all my old phones in a drawer just in case anything happens to my present one and I need backups. Mind you, I only have 4 older phones.

Really cool article, though! Thanks for sharing!

Those who want to blame the manufacturers for not producing reparable products need to look in the mirror.

It's all about price, price and price. Most folks will drive across town to save five bucks on a $500 item or order it on Amazon to save ten. The business press is full of articles going back 20 years about companies either going under or moving to Asia or even India. Why? Retail price. People love to talk about patriotism and supporting our workers yet what do they do when they go shopping? They shop based on price. That's it. Period the end. Making it cheap also makes it disposable.

Bob