That's a temporary problem, while mining produces plenty for very cheap. Once the cheep and easy mines dry up, it'll shift.
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
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On top of the relatively easy mining, there's the relatively low volume of batteries to recycle. If you can't keep a plant running all day you have a capital cost you can't reduce as fast. That will also be less of a problem in the future.
I mean the obvious solution would be to make car manufacturers pay for the recycling. Thats not gonna happen of course, but it would make the most sense.
Each product, including car batteries, should have clear life cycle and it should include recycling as much as possible. This should be enforced by law, but who are we kidding, right.
Companies aren't going to do the best thing for the long term, they're sole purpose is to maximize what's best for the company. It's the role of society in the form of the government to constrict what they can do for the betterment of everyone. So anyone who complains about regulations are probably the same ones who complain about taxes. They don't understand their roles and complexities and just use the sound bites they've heard.
Here's a better way: make them pay a part of the recycling costs. The more complex the recycling process, the higher the costs. This will incentivise engineering things from the end of the lifecycle backwards, making components easier to repair and separate at EOL.
From what i have seen lithium battery packs just get dumped into huge shredders in one piece and turned into a big soup. From there everything gets physically and chemically separated. But maybe that isnt the most efficient way yeah.
I'm not a chemist, but I've heard that a lot of substances (e.g. rare earths) are engineered into products in a way that makes them next to impossible to recycle. Which is bad because... it's in their name. 🤔
This is true of a lot of modern materials. Plastics, alloys, and microelectronics. The advancements make them better than anything which would be easily reusable or recoverable, or repairable. But we pay the cost, both in them being disposable instead, and in the forced design of being throwaway and not lasting, so profitable to make this was for the companies.
Which is bad because... it's in their name
They're not actually rare, the name is historical.
Rare isn't a binary quality, true. But the name isn't meaningless either. They're rare enough that superpowers compete over mining sites.