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China needs to expand its recycling capacity to deal with batteries from new energy vehicles. Pictured: a battery pack from a Chevrolet Spark (Image: GM)
Discarded batteries from electric vehicles will soon become a major environmental hazard in China, a think tank has warned.

New energy cars – which at least partly rely on electric engines — have sold in increasing numbers in China in recent years. But as the first wave of such vehicles need new batteries, the country still lacks an adequate collection and recycling system to dispose of the old ones, reported the Economic Information Daily, a newspaper under state news agency Xinhua.

Gaogong Industry Research, a think tank based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, estimates that a total of 248,000 tonnes of automotive batteries will be discarded in 2020, about 20 times the amount thrown away in 2016. If batteries are not properly recycled, the heavy metals and other chemicals they contain pose a risk to the environment.

“At present, there are at most five big companies engaged in [car battery recycling] across the country,” Gao Xiaobing, deputy dean of Gaogong’s Institute of Lithium Battery Research, told Sixth Tone. “Their joint capabilities were sufficient to process the 12,000 tonnes of used automotive batteries last year, but are far from enough to deal with the surge in years to come.”