No one wants my damaged lithium-ion battery (solved)

Unsafe at any speed! The bad battery in a cardboard “containment unit” on my bike trailer.

Since 2016 all locations of the Western Canadian retail chain London Drugs have been equipped to accept damaged lithium-ion batteries. This wasn’t the case when I wrote this post in 2015!

So far, no one wants to take the bloated lithium-ion rechargeable battery that I pulled out of a Kindle Fire.

On Tuesday I wrote about the Kindle tablet that someone left on a dumpster—how its puffed-up lithium-ion rechargeable battery had clearly suffered a thermal meltdown and what a dangerous thing that could be.

I was hoping to quickly and safely dispose of it at one of the two big box consumer electronics retailers located in the Fairview neighbourhood that are listed as participating in B.C.’s battery recycling program: Call2Recycle.

But I was turned away at both businesses and told that the others I had yet to approach wouldn’t be able to help me either. Sales representatives reacted with either shrugging regret or shrinking horror, explaining that they just didn’t have the facilities to safely handle the thing.

The thing was a battery but it might as well have been a dead cat stuffed with dynamite!

A store clerk understands the impulse to just toss it in the garbage

The first battery recycling drop-off location that I tried was the one closest to me: the Staples in the 1300 block of West Broadway Avenue.

The story could’ve ended there. The battery recycling bin was located just inside the main entrance and I could’ve tossed mine in and been out of the store before anyone noticed.

But throwing a lithium-ion battery that’s ready to burst its seams and spew fire, into a bucket full of other lithium-ion batteries, is on a par with using a lighter to see your way round an ammunition dump.

And it would so suck to burn down a store—even one that did stiff me on a Palm TX eight years ago. (the wireless infrared keyboard was supposed to be included!)

Instead I approached the staff at the main checkout.

The first counter person that I spoke to was actually fine with taking the battery but that was because he didn’t really understand what I was trying to explain. A second employee who materialized at his side and was several minutes more qualified to be management, absolutely understood.

His pro forma smile faded and his eyes widened. A look of concern spread over his face.

Oh no. No! The store couldn’t possibly take that, he declared emphatically.

Yes they recycled lithium-ion batteries but not—he motioned toward the unspeakable thing in my hand—damaged ones. They could not handle them safely.

He sympathized with my predicament. He even understood why someone would’ve left the damaged battery—Kindle and all—on a dumpster.

However, he had no idea where to dispose of it. He just knew that he couldn’t take it.

Finally, he actually offered to give me a flimsy Staples-branded plastic carrier bag to put the battery in—to protect it I guess—while I took it somewhere else, away from his store.

Sympathy for a devil of a problem—and some insight

The somewhere else I went was about eight blocks east, to the London Drugs location at 525 West Broadway Avenue, in the Crossroads Centre.

No one there would take the bloated battery either.

I checked with someone in the camera department, which I had to go through anyway, in order to get to the computer department.

A sales representative in the camera department politely told me, more or less, to keep going.

A representative/technician in the computer department then explained to me, regretfully, that neither his store nor the location farther west along Broadway at Vine Street, had the facilities necessary to safely contain such a potential health and fire hazard.

There were, he told me, three London Drugs locations, that he knew of, that were properly equipped to take damaged Li-ion batteries: one downtown (on Robson Street I think), another at 3328 Kingsway Avenue and finally the one in the Brentwood Town Centre.

Though he said he couldn’t help me, this London Drugs computer technician was actually very helpful.

He explained that his location of the chain store had actually experienced a lithium-ion battery fire within the last six months and that this had led to tighter procedures and greater awareness of the problems associated with accepting lithium-ion batteries.

All batteries actually.

He explained that it was now standard practice at his store to tape over the positive and negative terminals of all alkaline batteries returned for recycling because, mixed together in the return bin, the bare terminals randomly touched each other and caused sparking, and that had also led to small fires.

Qualifying to handle baked Apples

And finally, he explained how he was in the process of working through Apple’s service qualification exam in order to have the Crossroads location of London Drugs certified as an Apple service centre. (this happened in 2016—see end of post.)

Once his location met Apple’s rigid criteria, he said, it would be able to accept damaged lithium-ion batteries like the one I was trying to get rid of.

That’s because Apple requires designated workstations be fully equipped to deal with all potential issues relating to rechargeable lithium batteries: Apple’s own embedded lithium-polymer type and third party lithium-ion types.

This means having proper ventilation, non-flammable workbenches, easy access to C02 or dry chemical fire extinguishers, baking soda, sand and acid neutralizer. It also means having a proper fire safety box on site that is capable of containing hot, swollen or leaking batteries, not to mention full “thermal events”.

Everything the representative told me, and more, is covered in an Apple Service Qualification Exam document that I found online entitled: Embedded Battery Safety, including Apple’s insistence that technicians be sensitive to the slightest dings and blemishes on a battery.

The requirements that Apple imposes on its certified service technicians reflects the company’s history of pushing rechargeable battery technology—as exampled by Apple’s new terraced battery design—and occasionally getting burned in the process

Over the years enough Apple batteries have caught fire to trigger major recalls of both Apple-brand batteries (in 2006) and third-party MacBook Pro replacement batteries (2013).

But Apple can’t and won’t stop pushing and it’s requirements for certified Apple service technicians shows that it knows what to expect.

By telling me all this, the London Drugs computer technician was all but pointing me toward the one store in Fairview that was fully qualified to both sell and service Apple products, namely Simply Computing, located on West Broadway Avenue at Pine Street.

How I finally unloaded my “hot” property

The Apple retailer bags the puffy Kindle battery for transport. Bye-bye battery—and good riddance!

When I took the battery into Simply Computing at 1690 W Broadway Avenue staff had no problem accepting and safely dealing with the ominously puffy battery.

They said that they dealt with the safe disposal of several rechargeable lithium-ion batteries every month—including damaged ones, though they didn’t often see ones as far gone as what I’d brought them.

I explained why I had ended up on their doorstep—how it was my understanding that, as an Apple Authorized Service Provider, iSimply Computing was required by Apple to have all the procedures and equipment in place in order to deal with any “thermal events” related to malfunctioning Li-ion batteries, including having a fire safety box to contain a potentially explosive damaged battery.

Yes, I was told, the actual technicians probably did have a fire safety box in the back. The customer service representative even thought that he remembered seeing it once. But I didn’t get a peek—neither customers nor cameras are allowed in the service area.

Staff had me gently transfer the battery into an antistatic battery bag and my part in the recycling process was done.

Simply Computing’s manager, Desen Hanuman, explained in an email that all the store’s batteries that were slated for disposal and recycling were picked up weekly by the East Vancouver-based company The Hackery and were then recycled/smelted in Canada by the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation of Canada (RBRC), which is, in fact, another name for the Ontario-based non-profit organization that operates the Call2Recycle program.

So, in true recycling fashion, everything comes full circle.

It’s interesting therefore, both that Simply Computing isn’t listed in the Call2Recycle online locator for battery drop-off locations in the Fairview area.

(2016 update) All 78 London Drugs stores across Western Canada are now equipped to accept and safely dispose of damaged Lithium-based batteries (non-rechargeable lithium metal batteries, rechargeable lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries—the latter two being by far the most common type of rechargeable battery in use today.

You will need to bring the lithium-ion batteries directly to London Drugs staff in the computer department. Click the images to enlarge them.