Lithium-ion Batteries: Prevent Ignition Accidents by Promoting Their Collection

Editorial

15:53 JST, July 10, 2025

Accidents involving the ignition of lithium-ion storage batteries that have been mixed in with household garbage are rapidly increasing. Manufacturers and local governments need to properly collect these batteries and make thorough efforts to recycle them.

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in smartphones, cordless vacuum cleaners and other daily necessities because they are compact, have high storage capacity and can be recharged repeatedly.

On the other hand, they are vulnerable to heat and impacts and can easily ignite when flammable gases are generated inside or there is a short circuit. They must be handled with great care.

In fiscal 2023, instances of fires believed to have been caused by storage batteries mixed in with household garbage doubled from the previous fiscal year to about 8,500. If cases of small-scale fires and smoke generation are included, the number exceeded 20,000.

In December last year, a fire seemingly caused by lithium-ion batteries broke out at a waste disposal facility in Moriya, Ibaraki Prefecture, causing damage that will require about two years and billions of yen to rectify. This kind of fire is occurring in various parts of the county, and the situation is serious.

Even if storage batteries have deteriorated, they can be collected and recycled to retrieve scarce resources such as cobalt and nickel. This is an important initiative for Japan, which has limited natural resources.

Manufacturers and others are collecting lithium-ion batteries on their own initiative. The Environment Ministry is also urging municipalities to implement the separate collection of storage batteries. In response, about 70% of municipalities are making efforts to regularly collect them as “hazardous materials,” among other steps.

However, according to an investigation by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry on noncombustible and other household garbage in 43 cities nationwide, many lithium-ion batteries were found, either separately or built into heated tobacco products, as well as smartphone and mobile batteries.

There is a possibility that users of products containing lithium-ion batteries threw them out as household garbage without recognizing that they needed to be recycled.

Although lithium-ion batteries should be recycled fundamentally, some municipalities had been simply burying or incinerating them for reasons such as a “lack of waste disposal companies.”

It is important for the central government and manufacturers to grasp how lithium-ion batteries and the products containing them are actually being disposed, and to improve the collection and recycling of them.

Some lithium-ion batteries are integrated into products and are difficult to remove. Manufacturers must make it easier to remove the storage batteries from products to encourage recycling.

A topic that should be under consideration is the central government providing a certain amount of financial support to municipalities that have concerns about the burden associated with the costs of separate collection and recycling.

Efforts to deepen public understanding are also essential. It is hoped that the central and local governments as well as manufacturers will further strengthen their efforts to make the collection methods for storage batteries well known to the public.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, July 10, 2025)