Nomura Corporation of Hokkaido, Japan buys10.3 million tons of waste batteries from all over the country every year, accounting for 20% of the national waste batteries. Among them, 93% were collected by non-governmental environmental protection organizations, and 7% were collected by various manufacturers. In the past, mercury was mainly recycled, but at present, batteries in Japan no longer contain mercury, so we mainly recycle the iron case of batteries and the "black" raw materials inside, and develop and manufacture secondary products, such as one of which can be used to produce TV picture tubes.
German consumers are required to send all kinds of waste batteries, such as dry batteries and button cell, to shops or waste recycling stations for recycling. Stores and waste recycling stations must unconditionally receive waste batteries and hand them over to manufacturers for recycling. Waste recycling stations and manufacturers generally only recycle batteries containing toxic chemical components such as cadmium and mercury, while 90% of pugan zinc-carbon batteries and aluminum-magnesium batteries are buried or burned as domestic garbage.
The United States has the most detailed legislation on environmental management of waste batteries. Not only has a perfect waste battery recycling system been established, but also a number of waste battery treatment plants have been established. At the same time, we will persistently publicize and educate the public, so that the public can consciously support and cooperate with the recycling of used batteries.
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Waste battery pollution can not be ignored.
With the improvement of people's living standards and the development of modern communication industry, people have more and more opportunities to use batteries. Cell phones, pagers, walkmen and pocket radios all need a lot of batteries as power sources. In the future, there will be more waste batteries. However, although people have paid more and more attention to the protection of natural ecological environment in recent years, and achieved certain results in the treatment of environmental pollution such as water pollution, air pollution and white pollution, the pollution of waste batteries has not attracted enough attention.
According to relevant data, a 1 battery rotted in the ground, which can make the soil of 1 m2 lose its use value forever; A grain of button cell can make 600 tons of water undrinkable, which is equivalent to a person's drinking water for a lifetime. Among the five substances that pose the greatest threat to the natural environment, batteries contain three kinds: mercury, lead and cadmium. If waste batteries are mixed with domestic garbage and buried, mercury and heavy metals will seep into soil, pollute groundwater, and then enter fish and crops, destroying human living environment and indirectly threatening human health. How to dispose of waste batteries in time and safely has become increasingly prominent in front of people.
Once the human body absorbs these heavy metals, what diseases will occur? According to experts, mercury is a highly toxic heavy metal, which has great destructive power to the central nervous system of human body. The Minamata disease that shocked China and foreign countries in the 1950s in Japan was caused by mercury pollution. At present, the mercury content of mercury-containing alkaline dry batteries produced in China is 1-5%, and that of neutral dry batteries is 0.025%. China's battery production consumes dozens of tons of mercury every year. Cadmium is easy to cause chronic poisoning in human body, and the main symptoms are emphysema, osteomalacia and anemia, which is likely to paralyze human body. Lead is the most difficult to excrete after entering the human body, which interferes with renal function and reproductive function.
At present, the annual output of batteries in China exceeds 654.38+08 billion, accounting for more than 30% of the world's total battery output, and the annual consumption reaches 7-8 billion, but the recovery rate is less than 2%.
Recycling batteries is embarrassing.
Due to people's lack of understanding of the pollution of waste batteries, the phenomenon of discarding waste batteries at will is very serious, and waste batteries can be seen everywhere in both cities and villages.
It is understood that Beijing consumes more than 6,000 tons of batteries every year. Although the recycling of used batteries has attracted the attention of relevant departments in recent years, designated recycling units have been designated and recycling points have been set up in some high-density population areas such as schools, shopping malls and residential quarters, but the results have been minimal. Since 1998, Beijing Garbage Collection Center has recovered more than 400 tons of used batteries, and the recovery rate is only 1.7%. A large number of waste batteries were discarded.
From May 65438 to May 1998, Shanghai began to recycle used batteries, and the recycling points of used batteries are also increasing year by year. Up to now, the city has set up 4,000 or 5,000 collection points for waste batteries, and * * * collects more than 0/00 tons of waste batteries/kloc, but this is far from the annual output of about 3,000 tons of waste batteries in the city.
Three middle school students in Hangzhou used questionnaires, interviews, literature review, etc. to complete the investigation report of "Investigation and Research on the Status of Waste Battery Recycling" within a few months. The conclusion is that the recovery rate of waste batteries in China is only 1-2%. They are shocked by the current situation that waste batteries are harmful and poorly recycled. In the survey, three middle school students found that nearly 80% of the citizens thought that the waste battery recycling activities were "irrelevant to them" or "had no time to participate", and 87% of the residents discarded the waste batteries together with domestic garbage.
Because people don't know enough about the pollution of used batteries, it is very serious to throw them away at will, but many citizens are indifferent to the recycling bins set up in cities.
Changchun once put 200 green waste battery recycling boxes in the urban area, and recovered a large number of waste batteries. However, after a period of time, some recycling bins have become "garbage bins" for people to throw garbage at will, and some even encounter the embarrassment of "sealing". On both sides of the battery counter of Changchun Department Store, there are two waste battery recycling boxes, but the "mouth" is sealed by advertising posters. The salesperson said that since the recycling bin was put here, almost no one has thrown waste batteries. Everyone regards it as a trash can, throwing peels, scraps of paper and even spitting in it. They simply clean up the recycling box and seal the "mouth" to reduce the trouble.
According to the analysis of environmental experts, at present, there is no perfect and effective recycling network and system in China, which is one of the main reasons for the difficulty in recycling used batteries.
Where can I recycle batteries?
The difficulty in recycling is only one aspect of the problem. Even if the waste batteries are recycled, they cannot be disposed of.
Now in Dalian, 8-year-old pupils have begun to know that used batteries can't be thrown around. They will send waste batteries to schools or youth palaces with small hands, and some shopping malls have set up special recycling bins. However, these recycled old batteries are in an embarrassing situation, because people don't know how to properly handle these waste batteries.
Therefore, Dalian Development Zone Dongtai Industrial Waste Treatment Co., Ltd. began to undertake the task of recycling and storage from 1999. Yin, a staff member of Dalian Development Zone Dongtai Industrial Waste Treatment Co., Ltd., recently got off the bus and shipped 2 tons of waste batteries from Dalian University of Technology. Yin told reporters that now they often deal with dozens of universities, primary and secondary schools in Dalian, and they should regularly go to the door to clean up and recycle used batteries. Although the technology of disposing of waste batteries is not a problem now, it will cost money and the amount is too small. The reporter saw in the warehouse next to the landfill that nearly 100 tons of waste batteries were still lying quietly inside.
In fact, more and more enterprises and individuals all over the country are facing the same embarrassing situation.
In recent years, with the improvement of people's environmental awareness, the harm of waste batteries has gradually attracted the attention of all walks of life, and more and more people have begun to collect waste batteries consciously. Environmental protection organizations all over the country have also carried out recycling activities of used batteries, calling on people to collect used batteries and reduce environmental pollution. However, in the upsurge of recycling used batteries, it was not long before people found that the recycled used batteries could not be properly placed.
Tian is an ordinary woman in her fifties in Xinxiang City, Henan Province. Facing a mountain of more than 50 tons of used batteries, she feels very embarrassed. She and her husband are big battery sellers in Xinxiang. 1999 when she learned about the harm of used batteries, she began to recycle them. In June 2000, when she was recycling 20 tons of waste batteries, she sent a letter of help to the media: "Who can help me dispose of 20 tons of waste batteries?" But two years later, although Tian collected more than 50 tons of waste batteries, he still did not find a final destination and would not pollute the environment.
Some enterprises that began to participate in recycling waste batteries also encountered the same embarrassment. In June last year, a manufacturer of bottled water in Guilin, Guangxi, advertised in the local media "Give me waste products and give you back your fine products", and launched a campaign to send 30 old batteries to a bucket of water and 1 water dispenser to send 300 old batteries. As soon as this advertisement came out, 800 kilograms of waste batteries were collected in just two days, and 500 barrels of bottled water and 26 water dispensers were replaced. However, they didn't expect to spend more than 1000 yuan to "buy" environmental protection, and they bought a troublesome thing: when they contacted the environmental protection department, the environmental protection department told them that there was no factory in Guilin that could handle waste batteries at present, and they could only handle the recycled waste batteries themselves, without causing secondary pollution. In desperation, the company had to advertise again and announced the suspension of this activity.
Some used batteries recovered in Beijing have filled two 20-foot-high containers, and they have to lie in caves in the outer suburbs of Beijing because they have not been properly treated harmlessly.
It is understood that since there is no professional enterprise that can treat waste batteries in batches in China, areas that collect waste batteries all over the country have encountered such embarrassing problems. At present, many departments can only use stacking methods.
Is it unprofitable to dispose of waste batteries?
According to the survey, various economic factors restrict the development of waste battery treatment industry. Because of the low rate of return and long benefit cycle, it is difficult to attract investors, so it is difficult to form an industrial scale. Without scale, benefits cannot be realized. During the period of 1997, Beijing began to recycle waste batteries, and seven or eight enterprises entered the waste battery treatment industry, but all of them later withdrew.
In fact, the waste battery recycling industry is not unprofitable. Because waste batteries contain a lot of renewable heavy metals, acid and other substances, if they are reused, 40 thousand tons of zinc can be regenerated every year. According to Dr. Wei Chaohai of South China University of Technology, if 654.38+10,000 pieces of waste batteries are treated every day, the profit can reach about 20,000 yuan, excluding various expenses. 7 billion batteries, 50% utilization rate, annual profit can reach more than 600 million yuan. It can be seen that scale operation can completely create benefits.
Unfortunately, at present, a large number of workshop-style small enterprises are flooding the waste battery recycling market, which has disrupted the market order. Dong Jinqing, chairman of Dalian Development Zone Dongtai Industrial Waste Treatment Co., Ltd. told the reporter: "button cell has high recycling value. If you can recycle 2 tons a year, the enterprise can put in equipment for processing. Now some township enterprises look profitable and flood in, but because of their small scale, they have not been treated harmlessly, causing serious secondary pollution. "
Lack of policy support
The reporter learned in the interview that China's waste battery recycling industry still lacks policy support. The profit of waste battery disposal is generally reflected in two aspects: government subsidies and new products produced in the process of disposal, such as zinc, manganese and mercury. The common practice abroad is to implement "government subsidy" for the recycling of used batteries, that is, the government will give corresponding compensation for handling one ton of used batteries. In China, there is no subsidy so far.
According to reports, at present, many methods have been adopted in the recycling of used batteries abroad, which is worth learning from at home. For example, the recycling of waste batteries in the United States and Japan is handled by enterprises and subsidized by the government; Korean battery manufacturers have to pay a certain margin for each ton produced, which will be used for the expenses of recyclers and processors, and designated special factories for processing. Other countries reduce or exempt waste battery treatment enterprises.
When will waste batteries become valuable?
The harm of waste batteries has gradually aroused people's awareness. If measures are not taken in time, more waste batteries will appear in the future, and more waste batteries will be harmed. Therefore, it is necessary to take the recycling of waste batteries as a major event, so that waste batteries can be "precipitated" in time and turn waste into treasure.
So, how to solve the problem of recycling waste batteries? Environmental experts suggest that the disposal of waste batteries should be fundamentally solved. First, in order to make waste battery treatment run on the track of industrial policy, the state should introduce relevant industrial policies, laws and regulations as soon as possible, and formulate management measures and specific implementation rules that are in line with China's actual conditions. Second, according to the principle of "whoever pollutes will treat it", environmental treatment tax will be levied on battery manufacturers, and subsidies will be given to recycling links. Third, we should establish and improve the system of voluntary and compulsory recycling of used batteries as soon as possible. The establishment of voluntary recycling system can adopt the method of setting up public collection facilities; In order to establish a compulsory recycling system, we can require producers and sellers to collect their product waste through legislation. Fourthly, because waste batteries may cause environmental pollution during transportation and storage, a perfect management system for transportation and storage of waste batteries should be established to control transportation and storage to prevent secondary pollution. Fifth, adopt the method of "replacing old batteries with new ones" to give consumers appropriate preferential treatment and promote the recycling of used batteries.