Share on
Batteries play an increasingly important role in our lives and contribute to the large amounts of e-waste generated every year. In the healthcare sector too, there is a movement towards more wireless medical devices equipped with batteries, making them portable and flexible to use. These batteries are currently recycled, at best. As they are often used for short periods of time, they harbour potential to be reused in new applications.
In the project 'Bettery.com', CenSE, in collaboration with the spearhead Care Innovation (Healthcare) and the Energy Technology programme, is mapping the current residual streams of rechargeable batteries within 5 Flemish hospitals. We identify the current end-of-life strategies and determine the greatest opportunities to reuse these batteries in a higher R-strategy. There is no solution yet in Flanders to dismantle these medical devices and reuse the batteries in a new application. Given the necessary operations (testing, dismantling, sorting, production, etc.), this offers employment opportunities for the social economy. Within a broad cooperation with partners from the social pentagon, we will then look for opportunities to create new solutions with these batteries. To realise this, a social-circular chain will be put together.
