While electric vehicles are certainly greener than their gas-guzzling counterparts, the environmental benefits of owning an electric car, go to waste if EV batteries aren’t properly disposed of or repurposed. Battery waste is toxic waste, and the more EVs are driven, the more used batteries we need to deal with.

A new initiative from Volvo Buses shows us one way we can deal with used EV batteries. Volvo Buses, a subsidiary of Volvo Group, is committed to producing zero-emissions electric buses. They recognize that although bus batteries need to be replaced after many years of use, oftentimes the old batteries still have considerable capacity to offer. This ability is too limited to power a bus efficiently, but more than enough for static use for energy storage purposes.

That’s why Volvo Buses and Stena Recycling subsidiary Batteryloop have teamed up to significantly extend the commercial service lives of bus batteries. Once batteries are removed from Volvo buses, they are reused as energy storage units for several years, for example in buildings and charging stations.

Batteryloop also guarantees they can recycle these batteries in a sustainable manner once they reach the end of their second life as an energy storage unit.