Policy gap in battery mgmt risks public health, troubles recyclers

Kathmandu, Mar. 20

Jagadamba Battery Udhyog’s factory in Rautahat does not buzz as much as its founders would like. The trouble is finding enough scrap to make lead acid batteries. Jagadamba, which is one of the largest among Nepal’s automotive and industrial battery makers, is running at just half its capacity of 100 tonnes-a-month due to the raw material shortage.

"The smuggling of lead acid batteries has created a challenge for us. We do not have enough raw materials to recycle," said Sushil Kumar Agrawal, Director of the company.

He echoes the concerns of about a dozen battery manufacturers in the country which are running short of the raw materials despite more than 10 million units of batteries being in circulation.

Nepal has more than 4 million vehicles that use a lead acid battery to start the engine. It imports 55,000 – 100,000 pieces of inverter batteries in a year. Almost every office and more than a quarter of the houses in the cities have inverters or a solar light system that uses lead acid batteries for power backup. 

As per the statistics of the Trade and Export Promotion Centre (TEPC), about 482,321 vehicle lead acid batteries and 256,255 other lead acid batteries were imported in the last fiscal year. The domestic Nepali battery manufacturers are finding it hard to penetrate the market because a large number of used lead batteries are smuggled to India through a poorly-regulated border, where it fetches a pretty price.

Globally, the lead used in lead acid batteries comes both from lead produced from mines as well as from recycled lead, but over half the world’s lead comes from lead recycling, according to the International Lead Association.  On average up to 80 per cent of a new battery is manufactured from raw materials originating from used batteries, it said.

In Nepal, some of those batteries that are not smuggled out, are crushed or recycled informally, but vehicle workshops especially in the rural areas neither are aware of the hazards of the lead and other chemicals in the battery nor the standards they should follow for its safer management.

Dr. Jyoti Giri, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Tri-Chandra Campus, who is an expert in lead-acid batteries, said that the bike and car workshops carelessly dump the worn out batteries in their garages and riversides.

That’s where the formal industry players like Jagadamba can play a role. Agarwal had set up his plant after an awareness campaign through a non-governmental organisation. He said that there was a need to educate people about the possible risks from the worn out lead acid batteries and ways of their safer management.

 

Policy gap

But the country does not have any specific policy provisions and guidelines for the production, sales and recycling of the lead acid batteries. In a rather regressive move, bylaws of the recently formulated Environment Protection Act, 2020 does not have any provision to address the need while the earlier version of the law had a separate section and annex on lead acid batteries.

The earlier bylaws had provisions like submitting the annual transaction of batteries to the concerned government authorities, mentioning the risks of lead and acid in the battery in advertisements, applying the government-approved professional health and safety standards and storing safely. However, those provisions were seldom followed by the battery businesses.

It had maintained that the battery businesses would receive permission from the government only after arranging the acid processing and neutralising system, safety protocols, and separate locations to store damaged battery and repaired battery.

Lead acid batteries are hazardous waste that have lead, cadmium and sulfuric acid. Lead is harmful to brain, kidney, hearing and concentration, and reproductive system and may cause high blood pressure, joint pain and nerve disorder while sulfuric acid and cadmium can be more harmful than other acids.

Many countries have directions for the battery recyclers: acid from battery should not be thrown on the soil, it should be neutralised, amount of lead particles should be minimised, risks from fire should be minimised and immediate rescue facility should be arranged, and battery should be crushed by machine only.

Senior officials at the Ministry of Forest and Environment (MoPE), Department of Environment (DoE) and Kathmandu Metropolitan City's Environment Management Department, who spoke to The Rising Nepal, seemed unaware of the missing section in the legal instrument about lead acid batteries. Indu Bikram Joshi, spokesperson at the DoE, expressed ignorance about the inclusion or removal of any section on power storage devices in the new law.

 

Poor industry linkages

The indifference in the part of the government agencies and policymakers has resulted in confusion and lack of awareness about the severity of the problem in battery management. Producers, importers and scrap collectors are working on their own.

Ayushi KC, founder of Khaalisisi, a waste management company, said that the industry linkages were poor. Ayushi, who featured in the 2018 Forbes 30 under 30 list of  Asian Social Entrepreneurs, said that lead acid batteries draw good price but many scrap collectors are less aware about the proper management of such hazardous waste. Neither the government nor private or civil society organisations have approached companies like Jagadamba Battery Udhyog, Asian Battery Industries, Kulayan Battery Udhyog and Khaalisisi.

Some battery companies have occasionally launched battery exchange campaigns. Such campaigns were largely aimed at collecting more batteries for their industries and environmental aspects were considered less important.

Although the environment ministry provides approval to the battery production and recycling industries in Nepal, monitoring of such industrial set-up is rare. The environment ministry does not have any statistics about the batteries in use in the country, value chain of the recycling, status of battery importers and producers and cross-border smuggling of wet cells. Its job is limited to giving approval and recommending tax discounts for the imports.

 

Smuggling of high-value lead

While a significant amount of batteries are smuggled to India because of the higher prices of lead – a soft metallic element that generates electricity through a double sulfate chemical reaction – which is recycled and used in new batteries, about 13 lead acid battery production and recycling industries have obtained approval from the MoFE.

Lead is a high value metal. The price of the used batteries goes up and down according to the demand. To take an example, a 5 ampere motorcycle battery generally draws Rs. 100 from scrap collectors but its price can go as high as Rs. 300 when the demand of lead is high. Normal lead acid battery has 3-5 years of life while some may last as long as 12 years.

Traders and suppliers of the lead acid batteries in the country said that there was no guideline for the traders and if there was any, they don't know about it. Most of the private sector suppliers and government agencies like Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC) offer cash incentive on used-up and damaged batteries if returned.

Deputy Executive Director of the AEPC Nawa Raj Dhakal confirmed that there was no disposal system for the batteries but discussion has begun to create one. AEPC is one of the stakeholders in lead acid batteries as it works on solar home system.

Yograj Dhungana, Chief Operating Officer of Amtrade Pvt. Ltd. – a private sector battery trader and supplier – said that the battery industry and business are in need of standards on battery management. "The government should create a standard and those who fulfill it should be allowed to produce and import batteries," he said.

Currently, anyone having exim code can import the battery and his/her responsibility is over once the product is sold.

 

According to the European Commission, global demand for batteries is set to increase 14 fold by 2030 which will lead to surging amounts of waste. Batteries are one of the 26 kinds of hazardous e-waste included by the DoE in Nepal. According to the Global E-Waste Monitor 2020, Nepal generated 28KT of E-Waste in 2019.

 

Renewable Energy Push

As the world makes a push towards renewable energy due to a shift away from the use of fossil fuels because of climate change impacts, lead acid batteries can play a role the adoption of clean energy.

Nepal’s current 3.2 per cent share of renewables in total energy consumption is far from its pledged 20 per cent by 2020, according to Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis of government climate action measured against the globally agreed Paris Agreement. Similarly, the share of electric vehicles stands at less than 1 per cent, it said in its November 2020 assessment of Nepal.

As the country steps up its renewable energy and electrical vehicles push, chances are lead acid battery use will also go up. Provisions to safely dispose or recycle them are urgently needed else environment and lives would be woefully affected, said Dr. Giri.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 21 March 2021. 

 (This story was written and produced as part of a media skills development programme delivered by Thomson Reuters Foundation. The content is the sole responsibility of the author and the publisher.)