Will we be recycling Li-Ion like Lead Acid?

Recycling has been a success in the Lead Acid battery industry.

Lead batteries are the environmental success story of our time. More than 99% of all battery lead is recycled. Compared to 55% of aluminum soft drink and beer cans, 45% of newspapers, 26% of glass bottles and 26% of tires, lead-acid batteries top the list of the most highly recycled consumer product.

Wow, more than 99% of lead acid batteries are recycled. And they can, to the tune of 60-80%, be turned back into a new battery.

This can't quite be true for lithium batteries because we can't just melt down the component parts and put them back into a battery very easy. But this is somewhat due to the tiny volume of li-ion in a particular place. To get a high enough volume for recycling li-ion to make sense, the use of li-ion will actually need to be quite a bit higher.

But if current trends continue, we should see that kind of volume in the future. Even then, recycling of li-ion will not be on the same scale as lead acid because the recycling process is more expensive. The effect of recycling li-ion will probably be relegated to evening out the price of some of the component parts.

But I know one might point out the rising price of lead. And it's true the price of lead has gone up lately. Despite that, the 5-year price of lead has been a little over and a little under a $1 per pound.

But looking at lithium carbonate, the material needed for lithium batteries, We see a much wider swing. Note, too, that the graph for lithium is for a longer time period.

And there are also other components like cobalt, copper, and aluminum, but they are also difficult to extract from a spent cell.

It's not all bad. We will probably see a different chemistry in the next few years just based on creating a safer battery. And whether this new chemistry can be recycled well or not will still only affect the price, and not the availability, of what we will come to know as a necessary part of modern civilization.