Tech

Why you can recycle batteries—and how

Lithium-ion batteries, used in electric vehicles, are a more recent invention; they appeared in the 1990s with small electronic devices before finding a market for electric vehicles. As their use increases, so do efforts to recycle them.

All recycling companies’ processes are the same to an outside observer. The battery is disassembled and crushed, and the resulting powder is dissolved before using various chemical techniques. But the details will be the main determinant of how much valuable material recyclers can recover and therefore how much money they can make.

Thanks to advances in these processes, the prospect of building a business around battery recycling has improved. Similar dynamics are playing out in solar panel recyclingwhere companies are working to recover silver and other expensive materials from equipment.

On a personal level, I think finding ways to recycle and reuse materials to cut waste and destructive mining is a worthwhile goal. But profit is a surefire way to make battery recycling more likely.

We are still in the early days of battery recycling. China sponsored and encourage a great industryand now Europe and North America are catching up, with companies raising hundreds of millions of dollars in investments and building billions of dollars worth of facilities.

To dig deeper into battery recycling, I reviewed one of these companies, Redwood Materials. If you want to learn more about what Redwood is trying to accomplish or the challenges the company is facing, check out my featured story which appeared yesterday. I also spoke with JB Straubel, founder of Redwood Materials and former chief technology officer at Tesla, about the direction he thinks the industry is headed. You can find a edited version of our chat here.

Keeping up with the climate

Climeworks announced that it is start removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at its Orca plant in Iceland. (The Wall Street Journal)

→ The factory may not be big, but it is an important step towards eliminating carbon, one of our breakthrough technologies by 2022. (MIT Technology Review)



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