Nevada City Rotary and 49er Breakfast Rotary collected spent lithium-ion batteries and devices in a drive-through, recycling collection in the Rood Center parking lot Saturday April 15, 2023. Delighted local residents disposed of many vintages of cellphones, tablets, laptops, electric toothbrushes, shavers, vapes, wireless headphones, power tool batteries, video game controllers, and more. Almost 200 pounds of discarded batteries and devices have been sent to Redwood Materials, a company that recycles the minerals and uses them to make new rechargeable batteries.
Why? All lithium-ion batteries are made up of varying amounts of metals like cobalt, copper, nickel and lithium. Your smart phones, laptops and electric vehicles all have batteries made of these same metals. Old, end-of-life products can be sustainably broken down to their raw metals nearly infinitely. Recovering 95% of key battery elements to supply raw materials to US manufactures significantly decreases society’s reliance on newly mined materials. And Redwood Materials notes that “the largest lithium and cobalt mines in the western hemisphere can be found in our country’s junk drawers.”
Saturday’s event was the Rotary Clubs’ second annual lithium-ion battery collection. The local program is part of Rotary International’s focus on Supporting the Environment. For more information about the partnering Rotary Clubs visit NevadaCityRotary.org or 49erRotary.org.
