A STANFORD UNIVERSITY REPORT SAYS “Recycling Lithium-ion Batteries Delivers Significant Environment Benefits” compared with mining and processing new materials.
“On a large scale,” Stanford researchers write, “recycling could also help relieve the long-term insecurity—physical and geopolitically—of critical battery minerals.”
Here are tidbits gleaned from the Stanford paper published in Nature Communications, January 24, 2025; its StanfordReport news release, January 31, 2025; and my usual Internet sleuthing.
A Critical Question. Scrap materials from battery manufacturers and so-called “dead” batteries are rich sources of lithium, cobalt, copper, manganese, and aluminum. The critical question is which is better for the environment: Mining for these elements to provide stock for new batteries? Or recycling materials already in batteries that are no longer useful?
Scrap or Dead? The researchers note that dead battery recycling “emits less than half the greenhouse gases (GHGs) of conventional mining and refinement of these metals and uses about one-fourth of the water and energy of mining new metals.”
What’s more, their research found, “The environmental benefits are even greater for the scrap stream, which comprised about 90% of the recycled supply studied, coming in at: 19% of the GHG emissions of mining and processing, 12% of the water use, and 11% of the energy use.”
Location Matters. Battery recycling’s environmental impacts depend heavily on the processing facility’s location and electricity source: “A battery recycling plant in regions that rely heavily on electricity generated by burning coal would see a diminished climate advantage,” said Samantha Bunke, a PhD student at Stanford and one of the study’s three lead investigators. “On the other hand, fresh-water shortages in regions with cleaner electricity are a great concern,” she found.
The report recounts, “In the mining and processing of cobalt, for example, 80% of the global supply is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Then, 75% of the cobalt supply for batteries travels by road, rail, and sea to China for refining.”
These geopolitical facts surely stress another aspect of the location matter.
“Meanwhile,” the report continues, “most of the global supply of lithium is mined in Australia and Chile. Most of that supply also makes its way to China. The equivalent process for battery recycling is collecting used batteries and scrap, which must then be transported to the recycler.”
Mileage Adds Up. Researchers determined that the total transportation for conventional mining and refining of the active metals averages about 35,000 miles.
By contrast, used batteries from a cell phone or an EV to a hypothetical recycling facility in California travel only around 140 miles. This, of course, is another bit of data stressing the advantages of recycling.
Academia/Industry Cooperation. Stanford notes, “This study is the first known lifecycle analysis of lithium-ion battery recycling based on data from an industrial-scale recycling facility. “We are grateful for the data supplied by Redwood Materials from the largest industrial-scale lithium-ion battery recycling facility in North America, which was needed for this research,” said senior author William Tarpeh.
The report recounts, “Redwood, which has since broken ground on a new facility in South Carolina, was one of the first to apply the lessons of this project to their own operations and environmental footprint. Said company founder and chief executive, JB Straubel: ‘The insights of this research have played a key role in refining Redwood’s battery recycling processes.’ Straubel earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford.”
Image from Redwood Materials, Tahoe, Nevada, and outside Charleston, South Carolina (the latter, under development).
Recycling: Lithium-ion Versus Lead-Acid. Conventional motoring, of course, depends on conventional lead-acid energy storage. The report notes an interesting fact in this regard: “While the U.S. now recycles about 50% of available lithium-ion batteries, it has successfully recycled 99% of lead-acid batteries for decades. “Given that used lithium-ion batteries contain materials with up to 10 times higher economic value, the opportunity is significant,” Tarpeh said.
Looking Ahead. The report notes, “Industrial-scale battery recycling is growing, but not quickly enough. Tarpeh predicts, “We’re forecast to run out of new cobalt, nickel, and lithium in the next decade. We’ll probably just mine lower-grade minerals for a while, but 2050 and the goals we have for that year are not far away.” ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025