[The Hwankyung Ilbo] A ‘Debate for improving circulation of waste batteries in electric vehicles’ was held on February 12 jointly by the Ministry of Environment and Shin Chang-hyun of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea in order to draw up cost-effective and safe measures of dealing with waste batteries in the event of an electric car being scrapped.

According to the Clean Air Conservation Act, waste battery regulations require the removed battery to be returned to the local government when the electric vehicle that received the purchase subsidy is scrapped.

However, there is no detailed procedure for recycling, disassembling and disposing of the returned batteries, so it is necessary to prepare relevant regulations.

The Ministry of Environment will collect opinions from various stakeholders such as civic groups, recycling industry, and automobile companies, and will reflect them in related regulations.

The electric car is equipped with a high-capacity rechargeable battery, so the battery can be reused in other vehicles and recycled as an Energy Storage System for home use. In particular, the batteries contain rare metals such as lithium and nickel, so they can be extracted and reused.

However, the cobalt oxide, lithium, manganese, and nickel contained in the battery are toxic substances and have risks such as gas leakage and battery explosion. Therefore, a safe decomposition and disposal system is needed.

An environmental policy official said, "As the supply of electric vehicles has increased recently, the generation of waste batteries is expected to increase in the next few years. In order to establish cost-effective and safe treatment systems such as recycling, we will work with the legislative body."

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