Consortium aims to improve sustainability of batteries
The Responsible Battery Coalition was launched at the Green California Summit, bringing together organizations to improve the life-cycle management of the batteries.
The Coalition aims to promote the responsible production, transport, sale, use, reuse, recycling, and recovery of transportation, stationary, and industrial batteries and other energy storage devices, regardless of the technology used to make them.
“Every battery needs to be responsibly managed, and that’s why we exist,” said Executive Director Pat Hayes. “While current vehicle batteries have a 99% recycling rate, our goal is 100%. This also means preparing for the influx of advanced energy storage technologies hitting the market over the next five years. Our work is to accelerate solutions to ensure all batteries are responsibly managed.”
The Coalition believes batteries should be properly managed across their life-cycle to not cause harm to people or the environment and be reused where possible and ultimately recycled. Membership is by invitation, and is open to any company that manufactures, sells, is a major user of, or is involved in the responsible reuse, recycling and management of energy storage or batteries.
The Coalition will collaborate with leading experts through its Science Advisory Board which is chaired by Ramon Sanchez, the Director of the Sustainable Technologies and Health Program at the Centre for Health and the Global Environment, for the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.However it does include senior researchers from Stanford’s material science department, the physics department at the University of Chicago and George Crabtree, Director of the US Joint Centre for Energy Storage Research.
The initial focus is on implementing sustainability metrics and tools established by the Sustainability Consortium (TSC) for battery life-cycle management. “This is the only organization that brings together all players in a battery’s life-cycle including manufacturers, sellers, users, and recyclers,” said Dr Carole Mars, Senior Research Lead at the Sustainability Consortium. “Responsible battery management requires coordination across the entire life-cycle of the battery, not just at end-of-life recycling.”
www.responsiblebatterycoalition.org
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
