The environmental impact of battery emerging contaminants has not yet been thoroughly explored by research. Parallel to the challenging regulatory landscape of battery recycling, the lack of adequate nanomaterial risk assessment has impaired the regulation of their inclusion at a product level.
Batteries have an environmental impact, and there is much more work to be done to reduce it. Minviro and About:Energy have teamed up to provide new insights into battery sustainability, focusing on the impact of specific cell types to accelerate the achievement of net zero.
However, as we’ve examined, the battery-making process isn’t free of environmental effects. In this light, this calls for sector-wide improvements to achieve environmentally friendly battery production as much as possible. There’s a need to make the processes around battery making and disposal much greener and safer.
The full impact of novel battery compounds on the environment is still uncertain and could cause further hindrances in recycling and containment efforts. Currently, only a handful of countries are able to recycle mass-produced lithium batteries, accounting for only 5% of the total waste of the total more than 345,000 tons in 2018.
Given the rise in fuel prices and the promise to deliver a green alternative to traditional combustion engines, EVs have gained incredible traction in recent years. While the principle of lower emissions is certainly commendable, the environmental impact of battery production is still up for debate.
Environmental impact of battery nanomaterials The environmental impact of nano-scale materials is assessed in terms of their direct ecotoxicological consequences and their synergistic effect towards bioavailability of other pollutants . As previously pointed out, nanomaterials can induce ROS formation, under abiotic and biotic conditions.