In addition to the collection and recycling in Italy of WEEE, tyres and accumulators, the Consortium is seeking to extend circularity to other materials as well.
Cobat's (Consorzio nazionale raccolta e riciclo) 2015 report on collection data and the Consortium's activities over the previous year was presented in Rome. 146,000 tonnes of technological waste were collected, thanks to a widespread network stretching from North to South, distributed across 90 authorised collection points and 27 treatment facilities.
The Consortium maintains its leadership in the collection of batteries and accumulators, with 53 per cent of the amount placed on the market in the industrial and vehicle accumulator sector collected — a figure that corresponds to more than 126,000 tonnes of waste collected. As regards portable batteries and accumulators, collection is confirmed at 29 per cent (1,150 tonnes).
"Excellent results, but the objectives we set ourselves are far more ambitious," commented Giancarlo Morandi, president of Cobat. "We are at the forefront of finding a perfect synthesis between the circular economy and sustainable mobility, collecting and recycling all the components of the cars of the future — hybrid and above all electric ones — keeping pace with the innovative batteries that power them."
With the increase in electronic devices and, above all, electric cars and energy storage devices (so-called energy storage), it will be necessary to develop technologies capable of recycling the components, in particular lithium batteries. This is what the Consortium is working on: in practical terms, together with the Cnr and the Cnriccom (Istituto di chimica dei composti organometallici) in Florence, it is collaborating to identify an effective, efficient and sustainable technology for the recycling and treatment of batteries.
The objective is to define the processes that allow the initial safe treatment of spent lithium accumulators and the separation of their various components, both in the processing stages themselves, with the aim of recovering reusable secondary raw materials, in a circular economy perspective.