Redwood Materials looks to ramp recycling of batteries after accidents and natural disasters

Tesla co-founder and board member J.B. Straubel’s Redwood Materials is ramping its efforts to recycle batteries after accidents and natural disasters. The battery recycling startup posted about its initiatives in a blog post on its official website. 

As per Redwood Materials in its blog post, it partners with local and national entities to safely and swiftly recover any lithium-ion batteries during emergency response situations. This was the case during an accident on the I-15, when a truck that was transporting lithium-ion batteries overturned. 

Reports then stated that the material inside the truck’s storage container went thermal and caught fire, resulting in the section of the highway being closed for almost two days. Redwood noted that following the I-15 incident, it worked alongside contaminated material cleanup expert Graymar Environmental to help clean up the site. Redwood was able to receive the container of batteries and recover and recycle all the lithium-ion batteries involved in the incident. 

Overall, Redwood Materials was able to receive 70,000 pounds of battery materials from the I-15 incident. This volume is expected to be enough to remake about 70 electric vehicles. 

Redwood Materials also shared some insights from its experiences following the Maui wildfires. At the time, the battery recycling startup worked with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to collect, transport, and manage all the damaged lithium batteries from Lahaina. 

“This was an unprecedented operation where we were able to recover tens of thousands of pounds of lithium-ion batteries ranging from residential stationary storage systems, golf carts, and electric vehicles. These batteries were safely transported to our Nevada facility and have since been recycled with the recovered nickel, cobalt, copper, and lithium returned back to the supply chain,” Redwood Materials wrote in its post. 

Read Redwood Materials’ full post about its damaged battery recycling processes here. 

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