California sets new fee to fund lithium-battery collection and recycling
Starting this year, Californians will pay a new fee every time they buy a product with a non-removable battery, including items such as power tools, gaming devices and some greeting cards, under a law signed in 2022.
The fee is structured as a 1.5% surcharge, capped at $15, and it is designed to expand a recycling program that has quietly been collecting old computer monitors and TVs for two decades.
The policy change is tied to Senate Bill 1215, authored by former state Sen. Josh Newman, a Democrat who represented parts of Los Angeles and San Bernardino. The bill was signed into law in 2022.
Under the measure, consumers pay the surcharge when purchasing products with embedded batteries, whether the batteries are rechargeable or not. Many of those items, experts said, end up in the trash, prompting concern about waste handling and the fate of the batteries’ materials.
In its most recent analysis, the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery estimated about 7,300 tons of batteries go to landfills illegally or by accident. California pioneered electronic-waste fees with computer monitors and TVs in 2003, and officials and advocates say the fee helped keep hazardous screens out of landfills while improving disposal systems.
Advocates and waste operators linked the new fee to a shift in what lithium batteries power. Joe La Mariana, executive director of RethinkWaste, which manages waste services for 12 San Mateo County cities, said the devices are increasingly common: “These things are everywhere. They’re ubiquitous,” he said.
They also cited fire risk. Lithium-ion batteries can burst into flames and even explode under some conditions at recycling and waste facilities, and RethinkWaste and other backers argued that dedicated funding for proper collection is cheaper than damage and service disruptions. Doug Kobold, executive director of the California Product Stewardship Council, said the approach is “far cheaper than million‑dollar fires, higher insurance premiums, and rate hikes passed back to communities,” in comments on the legislation.
The article also pointed to a high-profile battery fire and its ripple effects locally. In 2016, in San Carlos, a lithium-ion battery sparked a major fire at the Shoreway Environmental Center recycling facility that led to a four-month plant shutdown and $8.5 million in damage. La Mariana said RethinkWaste’s insurance premium rose from $180,000 to $3.2 million annually after the fire, and that ratepayers ultimately bore that cost.
La Mariana also described the agency’s responsibilities as a publicly owned facility. “Being a publicly owned facility, every bit of that property is owned and paid for by our 430,000 ratepayers,” he said, adding that it creates “a fiduciary responsibility” to maintain the integrity of the assets and, “on a human level,” a “very high responsibility for the safety of our colleagues and our co-workers.”
Battery fires in waste and recycling facilities are an everyday hazard, experts said, but they are often underreported, with facilities sometimes wary of oversight or increased insurance costs. The article said batteries can catch fire in other settings as well, citing earlier this year reports that two girls were hospitalized after an electric scooter caught fire in a Los Angeles apartment building. It also cited a Federal Aviation Administration estimate of nearly two battery fires on U.S. flights every week.
The new surcharge is only one component of the state’s broader response to lithium-ion risks. The law exempts single-use plastic vapes, after concerns raised by the Department of Toxic Substances Control about collection and recycling systems handling nicotine. Nick Lapis, an advocate with Californians Against Waste, said he expects lawmakers to address vape risk this year and argued that vaping devices are “the fastest growing source of lithium-ion battery waste,” including in remarks such as: “If you imagine somebody’s a pack a day smoker, that means every single day they’re throwing out a device with a lithium-ion battery.”
Large-scale battery hazards are also part of the discussion, with the article citing incidents involving batteries left behind during the Los Angeles fires and separate problems at battery storage sites. It said that almost a year ago a fire at a battery storage site in Moss Landing burned for two days and required more than 1,000 people to be evacuated, and that neighbors complained of feeling sick afterward. It added that a recent study detected toxic metals in nearby marshes.
Beyond waste fees, the article said Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2024 established a collaborative of state agencies, including the California Air Resources Board and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, to look into safety solutions for battery storage technologies. It said new CalFire regulations for battery storage systems will take effect this year.
Earthjustice scientist Meg Slattery said the state’s focus on proper disposal of batteries and lithium in the waste stream is critical as California transitions away from fossil fuels, describing an additional challenge: “The next question becomes … where are we sourcing materials, and thinking through what happens to this when we’re not using it anymore, which I think we’re not traditionally great at thinking about as a society,” she said.
The report was originally published by CalMatters and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.