If the opportunity presents itself, I will seriously consider getting an electric vehicle, or at the very least, a hybrid EV. With fuel prices moving unpredictably since March, I reckon shifting to electric will help me manage my transportation costs better.

At the rate EVs are selling in the country today, the boom is here, or at least it has started. And with it, sooner rather than later, questions about EV operations and eventual disposal will come to light.

I raised this exact question in this column more than five years ago, in May 2021, before the EV boom had even started here. Back then, I cited Paul Anderson of the University of Birmingham, who warned that global EV growth was happening at a rate that had “never really been done before” for a new product, and who gave the industry a runway of 10-15 years to build a real recycling system before the first wave of batteries began dying in large numbers.

I also cited the figure researchers were using at the time: only about 5% of lithium-ion batteries worldwide were being recycled, with the rest simply dumped. That runway is now a third of the way gone, and the Philippines still has no law to show for it.

Discussions today are mostly about EV adoption, charging stations, maintenance, reliability, and local assembly. We do not talk enough about what happens when an EV and its battery reach the end of their useful life, even though that stage will affect safety rules, waste systems, and whether any materials can be recovered locally.

An electric vehicle is not only a car, bus, van, tricycle, motorcycle, taxi, or delivery vehicle powered by electricity. It is also a large battery on wheels, containing valuable materials, potential fire and safety risks, and eventual waste management obligations. If the Philippines wants an orderly EV transition, it must prepare for the battery afterlife.

The Philippines needs a Battery Afterlife Law: a statute establishing clear rules for the collection, storage, transport, reuse, repurposing, recycling, and final disposal of EV batteries, assigning responsibility to manufacturers, importers, distributors, dealers, fleet operators, accredited dismantlers, recyclers, second-life users, and government regulators.

We are not starting from zero, but we are also far from complete. The EV law already recognizes that the industry includes batteries and battery waste, and directs the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to develop manufacturing and recycling standards. But it does not provide a complete battery afterlife regime.

The Extended Producer Responsibility Act of 2022 institutionalizes producer responsibility for post-consumer waste, but it is focused on plastic packaging, not high-voltage battery packs or critical minerals recovery. Back in 2021 I was already asking why, if we require companies to clean up their air emissions and water discharge, we don’t require EV makers to recycle their own batteries, solar farms their panels, and wind farms their turbine blades. That question still has no legal answer for EV batteries specifically.

The Ecological Solid Waste Management Act provides the broader framework for waste segregation, but EV batteries are not ordinary solid waste. They pose thermal runaway risk, the kind of chemical fire that water cannot extinguish, along with toxic electrolyte leakage, neither of which standard municipal facilities are equipped to handle.

The Toxic Substances and Hazardous and Nuclear Wastes Control Act is relevant too, since it governs the handling, storage, transport, and disposal of hazardous substances.

What is missing is the framework that connects all of these into one coherent regime: producer responsibility, hazardous waste control, battery registration and traceability, accredited dismantling, second-life energy storage, fire safety, and critical minerals recovery.

Some manufacturers were moving on this even back in 2021. Several companies already proved five years ago that producer-side recycling was technically possible. What was missing then, and is still missing now in the Philippines, is a law that makes it mandatory rather than voluntary.

Japan is now weighing mandatory EV battery collection, requiring carmakers to retrieve discarded batteries and align them with the country’s end-of-life vehicle recycling system, driven by fire risk and by concern over resource security, since EV batteries contain critical materials like lithium, cobalt, and nickel.

China already requires every new EV battery to carry a unique digital ID for traceability from assembly line to scrapyard, and requires manufacturers to recycle the batteries they sell domestically.

A recycling market may sound attractive, but without strict rules, traceability, licensing, and enforcement, it can quickly become a race among informal operators and poorly regulated dismantlers. The danger is not only environmental leakage. It is fire, fraud, illegal export, unsafe storage, and the loss of valuable critical minerals to the gray market.

This is why battery afterlife policy is industrial policy, not just waste regulation. Spent EV batteries are strategic urban ore, containing recoverable materials that can support a domestic industry of recycling, repair, reuse, testing, and energy storage.

Japan is already treating that urban ore as a business line. Toyota Tsusho, the trading arm of the Toyota Group, has been building a closed-loop system that collects used EV batteries and recovers metals like cobalt, nickel, and lithium for reuse, scaling that collection network in North America through its stake in an auto-recycling operation with over a hundred sites.

As mine supply becomes harder to secure and more geopolitically exposed, a country’s own stock of retired batteries becomes a second, steadier vein of the same critical minerals.

The Philippines is in a different position, but the same logic applies with a twist. We are one of the world’s largest nickel producers, mostly shipped out as raw ore. A functioning battery afterlife regime would let the country capture value twice: once from the ore we already export, and again from the batteries that eventually come home to die.

But without a law requiring traceability, accredited recovery, and domestic reprocessing standards, that second value stream simply leaks away, either into informal scrap channels or unlicensed handling that turns a resource opportunity into a fire and pollution risk.

The private sector is not waiting for government to catch up. In Mexico, Pampanga, En Tsumugi ELV Dismantler Corp., the country’s first Toyota-endorsed end-of-life vehicle dismantling facility, is already training for the EV transition, backed by Japanese partners including Toyota, Mitsui, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

In March 2026, the company sent its team to Aichi, Japan for specialized training in EV battery dismantling and recycling. This shows that proper materials recovery can be built here, inside the same Japan-linked ecosystem that companies like Toyota Tsusho are scaling abroad.

But En Tsumugi is operating ahead of the law that should be governing it. Without a national Battery Afterlife Law defining accreditation standards, traceability, and second-life certification, a facility doing everything right today has no durable legal foundation for tomorrow, and no clear domestic pathway for turning recovered materials into local industry rather than raw export.

A single well-run facility operating in a regulatory vacuum is not a system. It is a company quietly assuming legal and safety risks that should belong to a clear statute, not to its own best judgment.

What the country needs is a brand-neutral, nationwide legal framework covering all vehicle makes, all battery chemistries, all importers, and all regions, requiring accreditation of dismantling and battery-handling facilities, and setting standards for removal, transport, storage, fire prevention, reuse, and disposal.

Informal junk shops and unlicensed dismantlers should not be allowed anywhere near an EV battery. The same law should set terms for processing recovered materials domestically, so recycling becomes a Philippine industry and not just a Philippine collection point for someone else’s factory.

The law must also look beyond cars. A battery no longer fit for an EV may still be useful for stationary storage, backup power, microgrids, or off-grid applications. That second life must be regulated just as carefully as the first, tested, certified, and installed under proper safety standards.

Otherwise, the country simply moves the risk from roads to warehouses and homes. Battery regulation must also be built to change, empowering regulators to update technical rules as new chemistries enter the country.

A Battery Afterlife Law will make EV adoption safer, cleaner, and more credible. Every EV battery should have an accountable owner, a traceable history, a safe collection pathway, and a regulated end-of-life destination.

Five years ago I called this the problem of the future. Japan is now turning its dead batteries into a second mine. En Tsumugi proved the same thing can be done here. The law now needs to make sure it happens safely, legally, and for our own benefit, everywhere, before the future I warned about simply becomes the present we failed to prepare for.

Marvin Tort is a former managing editor of BusinessWorld, and a former chairman of the Philippine Press Council.

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