Batteries not included: Navigating the contentious path development of battery recycling as a green industry in Shenzhen

Abstract

Geographical scholarship has paid increasing attention to the rise of so-called green industries. To evolutionary economic geographers, the development of such green industries represents a distinctive, ‘green’ form of path creation. Although green industries can significantly reconfigure socio-ecological relations, studies of green path creation tend to shy away from examining what green means and how green matters for green industries to take off. To address this research gap, this study examines the development of a battery recycling firm in Shenzhen by integrating perspectives from evolutionary economic geography and political-industrial ecology. We unpack the creation of a green development path in the battery recycling industry as a process of bargaining and interactions among actors who view used batteries differently. By doing so, this study enriches existing scholarship on geographies of waste, green path creation, and nature-society geography.