# What to do with millions of old batteries from e-Bikes, lawn tools, and power stations? Companies may be required to take them back > Source: > Published: 2026-07-09 22:39:46+00:00 **Getting your** [Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...They are found in everything from the growing number of e-bikes on California’s roads to electric lawn mowers and leaf blowers in backyards, and even in portable power stations used on camping trips that can provide electricity when home outages occur during storms. But medium-sized lithium-ion batteries — the kind that are bigger than small batteries in toys and phones, but not as big as traditional car batteries — can also cause dangerous fires and leach toxic metals into soils and groundwater when disposed of improperly. Trying to get ahead of a new generation of battery waste, a bill moving through the legislature in Sacramento would require companies selling mid-sized batteries or products containing them in California to set up programs to collect and recycle them for free. “These midsize batteries are really starting to proliferate,” said state Sen. Ben Allen, D-El Segundo, who wrote the bill. “These are batteries that are ending up in the waste stream. And there are a lot of dangers associated with them.” [E-bikes are a particularly fast-growing source](https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/07/01/despite-e-bike-safety-risks-enforcement-remains-challenging/). E-bike sales in the United States increased tenfold from 50,000 in 2017 to 527,000 in 2022, according to the market research firm [Circana.](https://www.peopleforbikes.org/news/electric-bicycle-market-insights-2024) Meanwhile, the US e-bike market has been [projected to grow](https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/north-america-e-bike-market) from roughly $4.4 billion in 2026 to more than $6.2 billion in 2031. The bill, [SB 501](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB501), passed the state Senate in January on a 30-10 vote. On June 29, it cleared the Assembly Natural Resources Committee 10-2 and is likely headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk by the time the Legislature adjourns for the year Aug 31. If the bill passes, medium-sized batteries will be added to a similar take-back law passed four years ago for smaller household batteries in California. Newsom signed the first law in 2022 and Cal Recycle, a state agency that oversees waste issues, is currently writing regulations for it, which are expected to be finished next year, with free collection and recycling boxes funded by the industry turning up at stores across the state likely 2029, said Doug Kobold, executive director of the California Stewardship Products Council, a non-profit that supports the bill. Several other states have already passed similar laws that require corporations to collect and recycle their products, often called “Extended Producer Responsibility” laws, for medium-sized batteries, including Illinois, Washington, Colorado, Vermont and Connecticut. Allen said he has been working closely with industry groups, environmentalists and recycling experts. Industry groups have not opposed the measure, largely because they’d rather have one standard set of rules than 50 different emerging state laws, Allen said. The California bill is supported by some environmental groups, along with the California Professional Firefighters, the cities of San Jose and San Francisco and the counties of Los Angeles, Mendocino, and Santa Barbara, along with the League of California Cities, and major trash haulers like Recology and Republic Services. The dangers of improper battery disposal are growing, experts say. In 2016, [batteries left in a blue recycling cart ignited in a San Carlos recycling plant](https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/09/08/san-carlos-recycling-plant-ravaged-by-four-alarm-fire/) along Highway 101, sparking a 4-alarm fire that destroyed all the equipment in the facility, causing $8.5 million in damage. Similar fires have occurred in garbage trucks around California when compacting equipment crushed the batteries that people threw in the garbage, which is illegal under California law. “You can only imagine in 5 or 10 years when all these e-bikes end their life cycle,” said Joe La Mariana, executive director of the South Bayside Waste Management Authority, a government agency based in San Carlos, which owned the recycling plant that burned. “We are going to get a tsunami of these things,” he said. “They are like little incendiary bombs. You don’t want then in the ground, you don’t want them in the landfills and you don’t want them and you don’t want them in the recycling plants.” After fire, Mariana said his organization, which collects and sorts recycled materials and garbage from nine cities on the Peninsula from Palo Alto to Burlingame, saw its insurance rates skyrocket from $167,000 a year to $2.1 million, even after the facility installed a new high-tech sprinkler system, water cannons and other upgrades to reduce fire risk. CalRecycle estimates that 7,294 tons of batteries are improperly disposed of in California landfills every year, and that batteries are the top cause of fires in the state’s waste facilities. Currently, batteries are recycled under a hodgepodge of different systems in California. Some private companies collect them and sell the materials — lithium, cobalt and nickel — that can be removed when they are recycled. In other areas, cities and counties take them back through household hazardous waste programs, which also collect items like motor oil, paint, pesticides, and propane tanks. The proliferation of batteries is increasing costs to local governments. “Oftentimes residents dump things on the side of the road that we then have to go find, pick up and properly manage as hazardous waste,” said John Kennedy, a policy advocate with the Rural County Representatives of California, during a hearing for the bill earlier this year in Sacramento. “As local governments, we have no control over what is introduced into the stream of commerce in the state,” he added. “But we bear the full costs of managing those commodities and the products at the end of their useful lives.” Environmental groups say that in addition to costing local governments money, which is then passed on to taxpayers, the batteries contain valuable materials that should be recycled rather than mined in developing countries, where mining can cause other environmental problems. “Our goal is to get these batteries out of the waste stream,” said Nick Lapis, a spokesman for Californians Against Waste, a Sacramento environmental group. “Beyond that, they contain critical minerals that can be recycled. The idea we would throw them away is incredibly wasteful.” Batteries collected now are sent to a number of recycling companies around the nation and the world. One company, Cirba Solutions, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, is watching the California law. The company has 6 battery recycling plants around the United States, said spokeswoman Danielle Spalding. It separates batteries by type, shreds them in heavy machinery, then uses magnets to pull out the steel to send to mills to be recycled. The other materials, called “black mass,” which looks like dark sand, are then separated using chemical processes and reused, she said. “Legislation is catching up to what the consumer is adopting,” she said. “We are relying on battery power more than ever. It’s mind-blowing to see how quickly the technology has changed. What California is doing with this bill is a signal to the market.”