Rad Power Bikes partners with Redwood Materials for e-bike battery recycling

Seattle-based e-bike manufacturer and retailer Rad Power Bikes has partnered with Redwood Materials to recycle its end-of-life lithium-ion batteries at its 10 retail and service locations across North America.

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Customers can bring depleted batteries to a Rad Power Bikes storefront, after which the company says its associates will package the batteries and prepare them for shipment to Redwood where they will be processed, recycled and refined for use in “the next generation of micromobility batteries.”

Currently, the program is in-store only, but Rad Power says it is hoping to expand to online customers in the future. Retail locations include: Santa Barbara, California; Berkeley, California; Huntington Beach, California; San Diego; Denver; Brooklyn, New York; Salt Lake City; Seattle, St. Petersburg, Florida; and Vancouver, British Columbia. Select locations in California and Washington also will serve as drop-off locations for end-of-life smartphones, tablets and laptops as part of Redwood’s electronics collection program.

According to The Verge, Rad Power Bikes is the No. 1 e-bike seller in North America, specializing in fat-tired bikes with big batteries and cargo-carrying capacity. The company says its ridership is nearing 700,000.

“Redwood Materials shares our commitment to promoting and enabling sustainable transportation solutions,” Rad Power Bikes says in a statement, adding that one of the reasons it partnered with Redwood is because it could “provide details about every element of the battery being recycled, all the way down to the actual lithium cells.”

According to Rad Power Bikes, since the program began earlier this year with a limited rollout, it already has recycled hundreds of e-bike batteries.