With the beginning of the brand new yr, Californians pays a brand new charge each time they purchase a product with a nonremovable battery — whether or not it’s an influence device, a PlayStation or perhaps a singing greeting card.
The 1.5% surcharge, capped at $15, expands a recycling program that’s been quietly amassing previous pc screens and TVs for twenty years. The change is a results of Senate Invoice 1215, its writer being former state Sen. Josh Newman, a Democrat who represented elements of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. It was signed into regulation in 2022.
Customers pays the charge when shopping for any product with an embedded battery whether or not it’s rechargeable or not. Many of those merchandise, specialists stated, find yourself within the trash.
California pioneered digital waste charges with pc screens and TVs in 2003. The charge labored, retaining hazardous screens out of landfills and constructing higher methods for correct disposal. However during the last 20 years, digital waste has continued to evolve.
Highly effective lithium batteries have grow to be cheaper and extra accessible as demand for know-how has elevated. They now energy on a regular basis merchandise as numerous as cellphones, AirPods, energy instruments and toys.
“This stuff are all over the place. They’re ubiquitous,” stated Joe La Mariana, government director of RethinkWaste, which manages waste providers for 12 San Mateo County cities — a co-sponsor of the laws.
They’re additionally, underneath some circumstances, a danger. Beneath harsh circumstances at recycling and waste services, lithium-ion batteries can burst into flames and even explode.
“Paying a small verify‑stand charge to fund correct assortment is much cheaper than million‑greenback fires, greater insurance coverage premiums, and charge hikes handed again to communities,” stated Doug Kobold, government director of the California Product Stewardship Council, which co-sponsored the laws.
A rising drawback
In 2016, within the San Mateo County metropolis of San Carlos, a lithium-ion battery sparked a serious hearth on the Shoreway Environmental Middle recycling facility. It prompted a four-month plant shutdown and $8.5 million in injury. RethinkWaste, a regional waste administration company, oversees that facility. Because of the hearth, its insurance coverage premium rose from $180,000 to $3.2 million yearly, La Mariana stated; ratepayers finally bore that price.
That fireplace catalyzed the waste administration company to hunt options to the rising battery hearth drawback.
“Being a publicly owned facility, each little bit of that property is owned and paid for by our 430,000 ratepayers,” La Mariana stated. “So we’ve got a fiduciary duty to take care of the integrity of those belongings. But additionally, on a human degree, we’ve got a really excessive duty for the security of our colleagues and our co-workers.”
Battery fires in waste and recycling services are an on a regular basis hazard. Consultants say they’re underreported, seemingly as a result of services worry oversight or will increase in insurance coverage premiums.
And batteries can catch hearth wherever. Final yr, two women have been hospitalized after an electrical scooter caught hearth in a Los Angeles condo constructing. In line with the Federal Aviation Administration, there are almost two battery fires on U.S. flights each week.
Clear power shift brings battery hazards
The charge that buyers will now pay is only one a part of the state’s evolving response to the rising danger of lithium-ion batteries.
Single-use plastic vapes are exempt from the brand new regulation as a result of the Division of Poisonous Substances Management raised considerations about assortment and recycling methods dealing with nicotine, a hazardous substance, stated Nick Lapis, an advocate with Californians In opposition to Waste, which co-sponsored the laws. They’re additionally the fastest-growing supply of lithium-ion battery waste.
“For those who think about anyone’s a pack a day smoker, which means each single day they’re throwing out a tool with a lithium-ion battery,” Lapis stated.
Final yr, Assemblymembers Jacqui Irwin and Lori Wilson launched Meeting Invoice 762, a regulation that may ban single-use plastic vapes completely. Lapis says he expects the Legislature to deal with the danger of vapes this yr.
Massive-scale lithium-ion batteries current nice hazard of a unique type.
In the course of the Los Angeles fires, lithium-ion batteries, together with from electrical automobiles, have been left behind — requiring a serious cleanup operation by the Environmental Safety Company.
And virtually a yr in the past, a hearth burned at a battery storage website in Moss Touchdown for 2 days, requiring greater than 1,000 individuals to be evacuated. Monterey County neighbors to the power have complained of feeling sick because the hearth, and a current research detected poisonous metals in close by marshes.
In 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom established a collaborative of state companies, together with the California Air Assets Board and the California Division of Forestry and Fireplace Safety, to look into security options for battery storage applied sciences. New CalFire laws for battery storage methods will take impact this yr.
Discovering methods to correctly get rid of batteries and their lithium within the waste stream is vital because the state transitions away from fossil fuels, stated Meg Slattery, a scientist for Earthjustice.
“The subsequent query turns into … the place are we sourcing supplies, and pondering by what occurs to this after we’re not utilizing it anymore, which I believe we’re not historically nice at enthusiastic about as a society,” she stated.
Alejandra Reyes-Velarde writes for CalMatters.
