You don’t want an old phone turning into a fire hazard!
Recently spotted my old PSP’s battery case had almost popped off due to the expanding battery. Threw it into a bucket filled with sand and hauled it to the nearest recycling place.
lithium batteries are no joke. they are not as respected as they should.
manufacturers sealing them in are not helping.
I wish there was more battery recycling places, I’ve seen way to many battery fires outside IRL because someone can’t find anywhere to put it, so they just dump it. Batteries are everywhere and recyclers haven’t done a great job educating people on it.
In the US at least, your local Home Depot/Lowes/etc is usually guaranteed to have at least some sort of battery disposal area. They’re usually near the front. Obviously not meant for like a spicy pillow li-ion that your average reddit.com/r/spicypillows user would love to puncture, but I run through rechargable 18560s with my vape & the moment their capacity starts to hit 50% of their original I usually make a point to toss them. Same thing with like places like Batteries Plus.
Your local fire department/garbage collection facility definitely knows who you can recycle batteries to though.
Those have never been useful for me, since I’ve never had a battery’s health drop to 50%, but I have had a bunch of Spicy Pillow batteries. And honestly, most people I know have seen a Spicy Pillow lithium ion battery in real life.
The only other reason I’ve had to dispose of batteries is when they’re sautered and physically connected to a device that’s died. Those hardware stores generally don’t accept those messes, not really worth it y’know.
Utility run hazardous material drop-off sites, or hazardous material collection trucks are way more rare than they should be. I shouldn’t have to deal with a private hardware company for waste disposal.
Does it make more sense to take the batteries out of these things before they get all explodey?
Unfortunately many devices don’t let you do that anymore. Phones are notorious for this now, but my old DS Lite has the same problem.
I’ve got a DS Lite sitting around that I was thinking of specifically lol. For some reason I thought it had a removable battery like the 3DS
I try to drain my batteries to 50% before storing them so they have some breathing space. That said I’m only delaying the inevitable.
~40% state of charge is where batteries are the happiest. But things rapidly get worse for them when they dip lower. I charge mine up to 60 then try to remember to check on them periodically.
A dead battery is much less of a threat than a fully charged ones. But a dead battery is much more likely to expand when you charge them up again.
