Chongqing- At 2022 Two Sessions, Tu Jianhua, a member of the CPPCC National Committee, prepared a Proposal on Efficient Recycling and Comprehensive Utilization of Waste Lithium Batteries. He suggests promulgating forceful laws and regulations and exploring the integrated development of "Internet + Recycling" to improve the recycling and utilization of waste lithium batteries.

Proposal on lithium batteries

Improving policies to support environmental protection industries in conserving water and energy and recycling waste and used materials were among the highlights of the Government Work Report delivered on March 5 by Premier Li Keqiang at the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress.

As electric vehicles and energy storage thrive worldwide, recycling waste batteries has become a major environmental issue.

In 2021, China's new energy vehicles (NEVs) fleet reached 7.84 million, ranking first globally.

According to Tu, the recycling of waste power batteries is still confronted with many uncertainties, such as recycling channels, safe dismantling, environment-friendly treatment, and technical approaches to turn waste batteries into resources.

Recycling enterprises face technical difficulties. One example is that the data flow of power batteries is not smooth.

It is hard to deal with the large-scale retirement of power batteries of private vehicles in the future due to the inadequate recycling management system. 

He suggests that more supportive and enforceable laws and regulations should be introduced, such as stronger supervision on informal ways of recycling waste batteries, to support qualified recycling enterprises achieve profit margins within a reasonable range, and improving relevant technologies to promote the sound development of the industry.

Internet + Recycling

When it comes to improving the waste batteries recycling system, efforts should be made to explore new business models such as "Internet + Recycling" and strengthen the development of the battery source tracing platform.

Measures include giving full play to the carmakers, adopting the reverse logistics method, which means recycling from service stations to 4S stores to carmakers, and implementing traceability management of power batteries.

He suggests building more regional recycling centers for waste batteries and establishing transfer and sorting stations so that enterprises can purchase specific types of waste batteries. This mechanism could reduce costs and increase the added value of the products made with recycled materials.

Furthermore, he proposes that the government introduce policies to encourage battery manufacturers to set up comprehensive utilization enterprises independently or jointly. In this way, full life cycle data traceability for batteries can be realized. Meanwhile, a smooth technical data chain from production to recycling can be secured.

The proposal also encourages universities and research institutions to cooperate with enterprises on practice piloting based on a comprehensive analysis of environmental governance and sustainable industrial development. Meanwhile, borrowing from the advanced European and American countries to make breakthroughs in key technologies for waste battery recycling is suggested.