North Carolina Bans Lithium-Ion Batteries From Trash, Bins on Dec. 1

By Rebecca Stone

Starting Dec. 1, North Carolina law makes it illegal to put lithium-ion batteries in household trash or in curbside recycling, a statewide prohibition aimed at the fires that lithium cells start in garbage trucks and recycling facilities.

The rule lands on a large residential inventory. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality puts the average American home at about 40 objects powered by lithium-ion batteries.

Forty devices per household is the volume county operators have to plan around. Multiply that figure across the homes in a county and the number of lithium cells arriving in mixed household material climbs quickly, one small cell at a time, each one a potential ignition point in a collection truck or a sorting building.

The products on that list are ordinary:

• Electric shavers
• Power tools
• Car keys
• Golf carts
• Disposable vapes

The law reaches the whole range, from car keys to a golf cart pack, because it follows the chemistry rather than the price of the device. A disposable vape and a golf cart battery reach the waste stream by the same route.

New Hanover County officials expect the state measure to reduce the hazard. The county runs its own recycling and solid waste operations and has taken lithium-powered devices for years without a state rule telling residents where to put them.

"The possibility of a battery fire is a constant concern at county facilities," said Joe Suleyman, New Hanover County's director of recycling and solid waste.

What changes on Dec. 1?

Two prohibitions rather than one, and the second catches households out. Lithium-ion batteries come out of household trash, the obvious target. They also come out of household recycling, the bin many residents have treated as the responsible choice for years.

What the law removes is the option of picking the wrong bin twice. A cell that reaches a sorting line can ignite, and the fire that follows can take the machine with it. The product list also shows the ban needs no large pack to matter: a car key and a vape sit in the same stream as a golf cart battery.

Suleyman put money and lives on the same ledger. "If it gets to the landfill it creates a public safety risk," he said. "Here at the recycling facility, just the loss of millions of dollars worth of equipment or possibly the loss of life is very concerning to us."

Those are the two exposures a county cannot absorb. Capital loss on the sorting floor runs to millions of dollars of equipment, and the official ranked a fatality alongside the machinery.

Which batteries, and which penalties?

A Nov. 9 report by WECT News 6 does not say whether the ban extends to electric vehicle packs, industrial battery waste or commercial waste streams. It sets out no fine, no enforcement procedure and no drop-off point for households, and those gaps will shape how the rule lands in the first weeks.

The commercial question matters for counties, because household waste and business waste arrive through different collection systems, and the reporting addresses only the household side of the line.

What decides what happens next?

Dec. 1, and the behavior on the kerb after it. North Carolina households, including those in New Hanover County, must keep lithium-ion batteries out of both trash and recycling from that date, and any change in the risk profile will show up in county incident records rather than in a press release.

For county operators such as New Hanover, the marker to watch is the fire count at the sorting line after Dec. 1, set against the millions of dollars of equipment Suleyman said is already exposed. For state regulators, the marker is enforcement detail that has not yet been published.

The prohibition takes effect either way. Whether it lowers the fire count will depend on diversion channels counties have not yet detailed and enforcement terms the state has not yet set out in the reporting.