Most likely, you are within reach of a battery. Your phone, your laptop, your remote – all of these contain batteries. Battery shapes, sizes, and scopes may differ, but ultimately, they store power to be used at a later date. The arrival of the battery has made remote-powered items possible in the first place. They have given us the ability to store energy we capture from nature for later. 

They are, in short, essential for a green future. That doesn’t mean, however, that they aren’t environmental issues themselves. 

Why Aren’t Batteries Sustainable? 

Batteries, like any one-and-one item, are inherently unsustainable. Rechargeable batteries, of course, have a much longer lifespan, but even they eventually start to break down. The mining of lithium and other key battery components also comes with a massive carbon footprint, and not all suppliers offer fair trade working conditions for their employees. In short, there are a whole host of reasons why batteries, as they currently are, need to do better for the environment and the people living on this planet. 

The good news is there are many key innovators on the horizon. These solutions are emerging to help reduce the carbon footprint of the humble battery while also making them more efficient and useful for all customers – and we’ll need them. Batteries are essential to get our electric cars moving; it’s how we can translate solar power into energy we can then use at night. Batteries are used everywhere in every industry and are even found in every household. So, what’s being done to make them more energy efficient and sustainable? Read on to find out more. 

More Efficient Battery Connections 

Energy-efficient cell tabs for pouch cells and other similar battery connectors are essential for extracting the most out of batteries while minimizing heat and energy loss. There’s a reason why battery manufacturers everywhere are starting to look to more innovative cell tab solutions for their own devices or for their battery designs outright. When batteries can be used more efficiently, less can be used overall. 

Circularity 

Circularity may not be the Hail Mary that most people hope it could be, but that doesn’t mean it won’t play a crucial part in making batteries more sustainable in the long run. The goal is to make recycling batteries easier than ever for consumers and businesses alike while also improving the current ability to recycle and reuse those batteries as a whole. 

Battery Alternatives

Another way scientists are looking to help make the battery more sustainable is by looking into alternative sources. Sodium, for example, does share many of the same chemical traits as lithium. The difference? Sodium is readily available. It’s easy to find, easy to extract and can be found anywhere in the world. It’s for this reason that more investigation and development are being put into sodium-ion batteries. As a big boost, the availability of sodium (as opposed to lithium) also means that the cost of batteries could very well drop considerably.