As you may know from my past columns, I’m a big fan of electric vehicles, but I also recognize that many people have concerns. These include the environmental impact of making the batteries and dealing with them at the end of their service life. There are also geopolitical and humanitarian concerns about where the raw materials come from (usually not the U.S.), the sometimes-dangerous conditions under which they’re mined, and the challenges of recycling them responsibly. EV batteries typically contain toxic substances such as lithium, nickel and cobalt, which must be handled carefully throughout their life cycle.
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And it’s not just EVs. Rechargeable batteries are in many household devices ranging from watches and hearing aids to home battery storage systems. My toothbrush, my smart ring, my TV remote control and some of my flashlights are among my many devices with rechargeable batteries.
And, thanks to the global growth of EVs, phones, energy storage systems and rechargeable gadgets, the demand for batteries is growing rapidly,
Repurposing and recycling
One business addressing these issues is Redwood Materials, a Nevada-based privately held company that repurposes and recycles rechargeable batteries from things as small as hearing aids and cell phones to heavy equipment like Caterpillar’s 108,000-pound electric underground mining loader.
The company has a massive recycling program, but it also launched a division focused on repurposing, rather than immediately recycling, rechargeable batteries. For example, an old EV battery can be combined with others to create an array powerful enough to run a data center. On its website, Redwood notes that many batteries still retain more than 50% of their usable capacity when they reach a recycling facility, enough to be put back to work before recycling. With this strategy, a single battery can have three lives: its initial use, a second life in repurposed applications, and finally, having its valuable materials recovered to make new batteries. Redwood calls this a “circular supply chain.”
Redwood says that its process uses about 80% less energy, 70% fewer CO₂ emissions, 80% less water than traditional ore refining and at least 40% fewer emissions than other recyclers. In mining, extraction and transport make up over 30% of the footprint; Redwood cuts that to under 5%, highlighting the efficiency of its circular supply chain.
My visit
I visited their 900-acre facility, roughly the size of 680 football fields, in Sparks, Nevada, about 29 miles from Reno. It’s also about four miles from the even larger Tesla Gigafactory, which, in partnership with Panasonic, produces the batteries used in Tesla EVs and Powerwall home energy storage systems.
Tesla’s battery factory and Redwood Materials aren’t just neighbors, they also share a founder. J.B. Straubel, who started Redwood in 2017, was a Tesla co-founder and its longtime chief technology officer before leaving in 2019 to focus on his new venture.
Driving to Redwood Materials is an adventure in itself. After leaving Reno, you head into Nevada’s high desert, where the landscape is mostly tumbleweeds, sagebrush and rocky hillsides until you reach the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center. That complex has expanded dramatically since I last visited in 2019. Back then, the Tesla Gigafactory was the lone giant. Now, companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple operate massive data centers there.
As you approach Redwood’s facility, the first thing you notice is a vast field filled with thousands of old batteries draped in white cloth. Just beyond that is an enormous low-rise building that houses the company’s offices and part of its processing operations. There are several other large buildings used for processing and recycling batteries.
Newly arrived batteries, waiting to be processed (Photo: Larry Magid)
“Turning pancakes into batter”
After I arrived and parked my Tesla in one of their many EV spots, a colleague and I boarded an electric Ford van for a tour of the facility. We saw large machines being used to crunch batteries of all sizes followed by other machines that separated and extracted the raw materials. The process, explained our guide, was “like turning pancakes into pancake batter,” to produce end products that battery makers use to create new batteries. He said that these extracted and recycled raw materials are as good or slightly better than new materials. At one point, I saw a worker unpack boxes of old electric bicycle batteries and insert each into a machine to start breaking them down into reusable compounds that would be used to help make new batteries.
The van also took us up a hill to a data center with a lot of solar panels and a large array of repurposed batteries that provide power when the sun isn’t shining or when additional energy is needed. The Nevada sun makes solar a great source of energy, but these repurposed batteries can also be charged by generators and other power sources. Eventually, even these batteries will be recycled, but not until they’ve reached the end of their useful life. Squeezing more life out of old batteries is both an economic and environmental win.
Redwood Materials, which has 13,000 employees, also operates a battery processing facility in Charleston, South Carolina, and a research & development center in San Francisco,
Doing your part
As I was leaving the facility, I noticed a recycling receptacle in the lobby. The company invites visitors to drop off their phones and other devices with rechargeable batteries and, on its website, says that “less than 5% of lithium-ion containing devices are recycled” and that Americans throw out over 150 million phones every year. They also point out that “Recycling batteries and rechargeable devices keeps critical minerals in circulation and reduces the environmental impact of our products.” You don’t have to drive to Nevada to recycle your devices. The California Department of Toxic Substance Control has resources to find recycling programs on its website.
Reincarnation
I’m not all that spiritual, but I do understand the Buddhist concept of karma and reincarnation The battery in my toothbrush has served me well. With a little help from companies such as Redwood Materials, maybe someday it will come back to help power a vehicle or maybe even a spaceship to Mars.
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Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist. Contact him at [email protected].