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Waste sector fears 'catastrophic' electric vehicle battery fires, as first wave of EV batteries reach end-of-life

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-29/waste-electric-vehicle-battery-landfill-fire-risk/104006608

Isolated incidents of EV batteries landing in the tip will become more common as the first wave of electric vehicle batteries reaches its end-of-life, the sector says, posing more risk of a "catastrophic" landfill fire.

Waste sector fears 'catastrophic' electric vehicle battery fires, as first wave of EV batteries reach end-of-life

I'm not sure how we're supposed to believe that disposal of nuclear waste won't be a problem when we can't manage systems to properly deal with the waste we are creating now.

5 comments

JBar2

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I dunno. Maybe because the average consumer doesn't have nuclear waste sitting around their house that they can throw away in their trash?

Gorgritch_umie_killa

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I'm not a proponent of nuclear energy, especially not for Australia, but we need a better whole of system waste management design, inclusive of radioactive waste materials.

Be it from the boats we're deciding to build, the unresolved temporary on site waste storage at Lucas Heights, or a possible future refining rare earth elements.

Right now all the different levels of government seem to do is farm their waste problems out to contractors when the waste disposal becomes complicated. And these conpanies like Visy don't seem to invest in much apart from the odd MIRV here and there and stick it in the ground.

Australia has got to be among the most wasteful societies on our planet, (per capita), but we also must have among the best abilities to deal with this problem.

First problem is, its not even on our radar as an issue that holds back our development as a country that does anything else but digging stuff out the ground.

Just listened to this,

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3g7UIqi616HUNle9zkeiof?si=V1FJSJ0lTz2071FTDnFWvA

Its inspired me to see the impact our half hearted attempts at waste management are possibly having on the strength and diveraity of the nation's industry.

RustyRaven

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Even basic recycling of things like plastics is not done well.

Government using contractors as part of the system is fine, but not having a system at all seems to be the problem. Government should at the very least be setting up effective frameworks for management, recycling and disposal of all types of waste. Instead they set up a few guidelines and leave it to "market forces" and wonder why we end up with dodgy systems geared towards profit for company owners at the expense of the health and safety of the general public and the workers involved in the industry.

In the past decade or so in Victoria alone there have been: warehouses full of soft plastic being stockpiled, warehouses full of contaminated "mixed recycling" being stockpiled, warehouses full of toxic chemicals stockpiled and being stored incorrectly, a massive property being used as an illegal dump for huge volumes of toxic waste being secretly buried, an old landfill site leaking dangerous levels of methane into houses in a nearby housing estate

These are just the ones that were big enough to be in the media that I can remember off the top of my head. This is what "market forces" and weak regulations get us

Gorgritch_umie_killa

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Ah Plastics is such a devil of an issue isnt it. It was so dissapointing when the red cycle scheme went tits up.

Though, i can't believe there wasn't a massive backlash against woolworths and coles for allowing red cycle to fail, it was their wild card out of the plastic waste negative publicity they suffer.

But there are thousands of types of plastics used by all kinds of companies with such little transparency/rationalisation that the plastic types can really only be boiled down to 7 broad buckets.
There are no market or government incentives i know about to choose recycled plastic over virgin for all categories but to charge an ecological premium for a companies product.
And thats only to consider some of the problems with so much plastic use. To even consider, a reasonable reducing, reusing, recycling plan for plastics we have to consider the costs this will entail to all the medical gear, electrical gear, cars, and everything else we successfully use plastic for.
The one great thing though, is plastic is supposedly a byproduct of the oil industry. So if the economies of scale start shifting away from oil production, we might finally begin to see a true reflection of the cost of plastic, not one artificially low because oil as a fuel is the flagship product.

reddig33

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I’d be more concerned about lithium fires from disposable vapes and other tiny electronics than a car battery. Most car batteries will be sent to off grid storage to squeeze the last life out of them. Then they’ll be recycled because the metals inside are worth a lot of money.