The dirty business of old car batteries
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The recycling of lead acid batteries poses a growing health hazard in many developing countries.
Vivienne Nunis looks at the case of Bangladesh, where a cottage industry has sprung up all over the country, with old car and auto-rickshaw batteries being burned in unsafe conditions, poisoning the surrounding land, animals, plants and people. Researcher Bret Ericson says that hundreds of millions of children across the developing world have dangerously high blood lead levels, risking damage to their developing brains.
Andrew McCartor of the anti-pollution activists Pure Earth explains why the economics of battery recycling make it such an intractable problem, while Adam Muellerweiss of the major global battery manufacturer Clarios explains what he thinks needs to be done to make recycling a fully closed-loop process, as it is in the developed world. Plus industry journalist Christian Ruoff explains why the rise of electric vehicles does not spell the end of lead acid batteries.
(Picture: Used batteries piled up at a recycling plant in Russia; Credit: Peter Kovalev\TASS via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Vivienne Nunes and today on Business Daily we're talking about batteries. No, not the |
| 0:07.4 | kind you put in your TV remote or the one you're always charging in your mobile phone. No, I'm |
| 0:13.4 | talking about these. Every morning when you start your car or moped, you rely on a big lead acid battery. |
| 0:24.5 | The problem comes when they need replacing. |
| 0:27.4 | They're easy enough to melt down and turn into new batteries. |
| 0:30.7 | But lead is toxic. |
| 0:32.4 | And if it's not handled correctly, that can be dangerous. |
| 0:35.8 | And it's risking the health of millions of people. |
| 0:39.2 | They would bring their batteries from other places and burn them here. |
| 0:43.7 | After a few days, it would smell bad and it was difficult to eat food in our house. |
| 0:49.3 | Our children would fall sick. |
| 0:50.9 | The dirty business of battery recycling, Here on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:06.2 | Rush hour in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital. |
| 1:10.2 | On the road, there are cars, trucks and dozens of motorised three-wheel rickshaws. |
| 1:15.5 | Since the auto rickshaws or easy bikes, as they're known locally, |
| 1:19.3 | were introduced a decade ago, demand for lead acid batteries has skyrocketed. |
| 1:24.6 | Today, recycling them is big business. |
| 1:30.1 | That's because lead acid batteries are those rare products that can be recycled cheaply and easily in backyard settings, and that's leading to some |
| 1:36.4 | huge problems. |
| 1:42.4 | We're standing in the village of Katgarra. |
| 1:44.9 | This place used to be full of bamboo trees. |
| 1:47.1 | It was a plantation. |
... |
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