MD Giulio Airaga sees the consumer as the recycler

Desco Electronic Recyclers recently participated in the Enabling Electrification panel discussion, at the Navigating the Future of Supply Chains in South Africa conference.

A key message from the panel discussion was the need to build robust battery recycling ecosystems to support South Africa’s electric vehicle (EV) transition, however “the challenge isn’t just recycling batteries – it’s ensuring they reach recyclers efficiently”.

ESG Global recently caught up with Giulio Airaga, MD of Desco Electronic Recyclers, to ask him three clever questions about informal waste pickers, hydro and pyro extraction and whether the recycling ecosystem could support smaller businesses.

Is there a role for informal waste pickers in “building robust battery recycling ecosystems to support South Africa’s electric vehicle (EV) transition”? If so, what is that role?

Waste pickers play a crucial role in the e-waste sector for many reasons; they pick and recover from the landfill what people throw out. These are often common household appliances/cheap electronics. Not that there isn’t much higher value products being sent to landfills. The value fractions and negative fractions or hazardous fractions like batteries can be recovered and sent to a recycler if an informal waste collector collects it. I don’t see this being possible with EV batteries, because recycling cars is a totally different ball game. It’s heavily regulated and for good reason ends up at a metal recycler with licensed specialty in cars. If it’s at a recycler like this, it was likely due to it being an insurance write off/legal seizure/end of life from accident/mechanical damage beyond repair. Sometimes for brand protection, an OEM that has a product line issue and they have to scrap brand new cars, the OEM will also reach out to the same type of recycler – in all examples it is a legal institute (business) controlling the end-of-life process.

I think the “recovery” or “removal” and disposal of the battery will 99% of the time take place in a formal system (like at a car dealer).

Desco currently uses mechanical processing for lithium-ion battery recycling and is looking at hydrometallurgical or pyrometallurgical extraction. How will these new approaches impact the environment?

So, firstly hydro has a lower carbon footprint than pyro and is more “selective” in material recovery, but also requires the water and chemical after-use treatment. Pyro is way more energy intensive and is a much better option if you’re working at scale (with high tonnage), it will work out possibly more feasible, but there is a principle called “loss of ignition” which basically means you lose some commodities in the process with a smelting process.

The question is quite broad, however the cost of mining virgin materials will have a way higher environmental impact than both processes combined.

A “mandatory take-back” programme and deposit scheme is potentially a working model for companies like Daimler and DHL. Can you expand on how such a model will work for smaller recycling businesses?

Collection mechanism is the biggest hurdle because it comes down to cost and reach of recyclers. The consumer plays the role of getting the battery back to the producer when there is a need for a new one or the old one has to be disposed of. The consumer plays a crucial role in this process and from an e-waste perspective should be incentivised to do so because the consequence of the consumer not returning the e-waste is it may be disposed of incorrectly.

From an EV perspective, if the consumer doesn’t do the disposal and swap out process with the OEM, then their EV won’t operate. Recyclers need to be connected to the network in the disposal process, by way of collection agents, the OEM centralising the material, or the OEM consolidating their disposal and delivering it to the recyclers.

It’s not feasible to have multiple battery recycling plants in every region and the volume of batteries even outside of EVs won’t allow for this. So, if the recycler handles this process, it’s important to be subsidised and costs covered from transport to disposal costs. This principle is true for both “small” and “large” recyclers.