Amman- 4 November 2019

Energy Storage Systems play a major role in our everyday life. Portable electronics, regular, hybrid, and electric vehicles all employ various types of batteries that would have to be discarded when spent. Researchers at the German Jordanian University have been investigating the status of battery disposal in Jordan and, in cooperation with the Ministry of Environment, were able to look at past, current, and future initiatives, guidelines, and legislation to sound the alarm and raise social awareness of the importance of properly discarding batteries and the laws to enforce them.

Dr. Mohamad K. Khawaja and Dr. Ammar Alkhalidi, both of the Energy Engineering Department, along with Sara Mansour, a graduate from the Biomedical Engineering Department, published an article in the Journal of Energy Storage titled “Environmental impacts of energy storage waste and regional legislation to curtail their effects – highlighting the status in Jordan.”

The paper encourages consumers to be conscious of the environmental impacts of discarding batteries and the importance of disposing them properly to ensure recycle and/or resale of those batteries.

In a country like Jordan where hundreds of thousands of lead-acid batteries are imported annually and with an ever-increasing number of electric vehicles on the road, proper disposal of spent batteries becomes essential for environmental and economic reasons.

According to the Jordanian Drivers and Vehicles Licensing Department (DVLD), in 2018 approximately 8000 of all cars in Jordan were electric in some way, fully EV or plug-in hybrids. The new electric vehicles that are dominating the market operate on a new generation of batteries, lithium-ion is one example, where domestically in Jordan there are no proper channels or future plans that afford the consumer a safe method of disposing of them that ensure proper recycling or resale. This publication aims to make the Jordanian consumers aware of the battery disposal predicament and encourages them to properly discard any of their energy storage devices.

Special thanks to the Jordanian Ministry of Environment and its Director of Hazardous Substances Dr. Mohammad Khashashaneh for providing the team with invaluable information regarding hazardous electronic waste in Jordan.

The link for the article, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352152X19304815