What do you have in your junk drawer? Did you know 150 million phones are simply thrown away every year? What to do with these phones and other rechargeable devices. The Pilot Knob Rotary Club (PKRC) is partnering with Guyer High School, and Redwood Materials, a major recycler in Nevada.
The use of lithium-ion batteries is increasing, not only as the electric vehicle industry is scaling, but also with the increasing use of these batteries in cell phones, laptops, tablets, power tools, electric toothbrushes, wireless headphones, vaping devices and any other rechargeable device with a lithium-ion battery. These rechargeable batteries contain minerals in limited supply, such as nickel, lithium and cobalt, many of which are mined in third world countries. Mining is not environmentally friendly, and these countries do not adhere to high environmental and safety standards (including child labor). In the case of cobalt, the mines and the processing are dominated by China. Future supply of these minerals will not be able to keep up with the surge in demand. Today, less than 17% of consumer lithium-ion batteries are recycled and many have ended up in landfills, causing fires and harmful environmental impacts.
This is where Redwood Materials, a company founded by the ex-CTO of Tesla, JB Straubel, comes in. Having led battery cell design and scaling the first Gigafactory at Tesla, JB saw first-hand the need to recycle lithium-ion batteries.
Pilot Knob Rotary Club (PKRC) is targeting households in your community and offering a recycling event in conjunction with Redwood Materials and Guyer High School Advanced Placement Environmental Science Students. Our goal is to develop awareness and a movement to "mine the junk drawers of America" for rechargeable electronic devices. There isn't a requirement to extract the battery from the gadget, just bring the entire product to be recycled. The recovery of the essential minerals will help ensure the security of American supply chains for electric vehicle batteries and the electric grid. (Before bringing your device, make sure you’ve deleted all data removed the SIM card, and reset to factory settings. Just the device please-no cords or chargers needed.)
As mentioned, we are working with Advanced Placement Environmental Science students (120 strong) at John H. Guyer High School at 7501 Teasley Ln, Denton, TX 76210 to conduct a one- day collection event on April 13 from 10am to 3pm. The students are taking major ownership designing original art; creating a slogan, logo and jingle; reaching out to their peers via social media, newsletters, family and friends; contacting city and county officials, their own faculty and students; other schools, local businesses, printed media, newspapers, and radio and tv outlets to educate and inform as to why recycling is important.
PKRC is one of over 46,000 clubs and 1.4 million individuals in service to local communities and citizens worldwide in the Rotary International organization https://www.rotary.org/en We are people of action who meet on Fridays at noon in the boardroom of the Wildhorse Grill (Address: 9400 Ed Robson Blvd #8671, Denton, TX 76207) at Robson Ranch. We’d love to have you join us for a free meal and to see how individuals with a vision and a desire to make a difference in the world can adopt the Rotary slogan: “Service Above Self.” Visit us at https://www.pilotknobrotary.com