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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

What I'm worried about is the waste of lithium and other battery/accumulator metals. In theory, people should turn electronic devices and batteries to recycling facilities, but a large part of the population ignores the rules and throws their gadgets into the trash when broken...

I wonder if someday we will find a way to "separate" trash on atomar level (i.e. put arbitrary stuff in on one side, get raw atoms on the other side)...

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One solution is to collect a payment when you buy a new gadget, then you get it back when you return it for recycling.

At the moment recycling technology can already grind stuff into small particles and float it in salts of different densities to separate it. That doesn't go to atomic level of course...

I think it's a fundamental outcome of the laws of entropy that separating always takes a lot more energy than mixing, so if you've mixed it, you've lost the game already.

We do this in Finland for bottles and cans. Giving people the financial incentive to recycle has two effects: - For those who want to keep their money they take it back - If they don't care enough, they leave it somewhere and there are many "recyclers" who are happy to pick up your cans and bottles and get the money for them.

Yeah, we do that in most US states too. At our dump (disposal area) there is a station to donate your bottles and cans to local charities and schools.

> One solution is to collect a payment when you buy a new gadget, then you get it back when you return it for recycling.

that's an excellent idea.

This is a good idea - and what they already do in the auto industry for parts that can be re-machined and sold again.

NO! I own the battery. I can do what I like with it. I'm not paying for this. Ugh.

You would still own the battery and you can still do what you like with it.

Todays landfills are tomorrows mines.

And archaeological dig sites.

In some areas if I recall there are companies doing such. Landfill mining and reclamation (LFMR)

razster, you seem to be hell-banned.

If batteries really are used in cars, they will be, by far, the largest source of bad batteries. And it's pretty tough to just throw away a 800-lb battery. It's the same reason that old car engines are recycled, not trashed.

Right now Nissan will replace the battery in your Leaf. But they _require_ the old one since its value is built into the cost of the replacement.

Where I live, at least, I'd have to make a special trip between 9-5 on a weekday to a battery recycling facility. And when I'm free on a weekday I'm not spending that time schlepping batteries across town. If they included batteries in curbside recycling pickup, you'd get the same high rates you do with paper, plastic, glass, and metal.

There is a Penn and Teller skit where they go to people's home's and ask about curb side recycling. They ask the home owners if they'd be willing to have a x colour bin for y. They continue on and on and on until the home owners have 15 bins out front their house. Although most of the home owners agree to have that many bins, I think their point was to say, we can't have a rainbow of bins out front our homes.

Then take them with the plastic/metal/glass, which needs to be sorted anyway, and sort out the batteries when you do the rest. IIRC the first 90% of the sorting is done by density anyway, and I'm sure that technique would be pretty effective at separating batteries (very dense) from milk cartons, tin cans, and takeout containers (less so).

My family in The Netherlands has 3 bins.

Paper, plastic and other waste, and greens (compost).

They also get charged per pickup, so it is in your best interest to separate as much out as possible/flatten it, and make as little waste as possible in the first place.

In NL, this is different per municipality, btw. Although I have heard that where I live, garbage is not separated, it would cost more energy for the separate (garbage pickup, etc) transport chains than it would cost to separate it at the dump site.

Also, regarding batteries, almost all supermarkets (which are generally within walking distance in NL) have a disposal bin for batteries.

Ottawa has four: Paper, plastic and glass, compost, and other waste. We also have days for yard clippings, christmas trees, and old mattresses, as well as "give away" days for when something isn't garbage.

in denmark you just put a clear plastic bag of batteries on top of your bin. You really don't accumulate enough batteries to justify a whole bin for each house.

In the United States when you buy a new lead-acid car battery, they will charge you $10-$15 extra unless you turn in your old one (this is referred to as a "core charge"). The infrastructure already exists at parts stores to recycle these type of batteries, I'm sure it could be extended to li-ion ones as well, If they made their way into cars on a large scale.

It is a big issue, but these facilities are becoming more common. One trick that works for me: put used batteries inside an empty bottle when the bottle is full take that to the facility.

Unless you live in San Francisco, municipal battery recycling programs consist of transporting batteries to the landfill for you.

What ever happened to the trash-to-Syngas plant supposedly operating in New Jersey? How would that handle lithium batteries?

I assume they already separate out valuable materials like aluminum.

Well that would require a lot of energy !

Not necessarily. A lot of our trash is in complex molecules. If the binding energy of those molecules is higher than the binding energy of the simpler elements/compounds that we get out then, in theory, the process would also be energy positive.

In theory it may not be that much. There's no reason you can't reuse the same few J to split several molecules, and capture it again for the next batch.

One probably can't get a resersible process, but just adding up the energy to break all the trash can be wrong by several orders of magnitude.

Achieving nuclear fusion should provide us with the energy.

Yeah that was what I was about to say, fusion, solar, and other centralized energy tech (if we every readily deploy them) should allow us to trade more energy for more of the materials we need, and then as other commentators have said, the trash piles of the world start to look like just a bunch of raw materials.

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