EV battery recycling has an economics problem. Colorado has a solution
The EV battery recycling industry faces an economic hurdle where the cost of processing batteries often outweighs the value of recovered minerals. Colorado is exploring solutions to prevent these batteries from becoming hazardous waste.
Why it matters
Highlights a significant economic and environmental bottleneck in the transition to electric vehicles and the circular economy.
Stay up to date with our Up First newsletter, sent every weekday morning.
On a sweltering morning in early July, Thomas Andrade, the co-owner of Everett Auto Parts in Massachusetts, supervises as a team of workers carefully straps two Chevy Volt hybrid batteries to a pallet, ready to ship out for recycling.
Selling off valuable bits and pieces of a vehicle is, fundamentally, how a salvage yard makes money. And these batteries are, in fact, full of valuable minerals: nickel and cobalt and manganese and lithium. They're headed to a battery recycler who will shred them into a fine, dark powder called black mass, from which those minerals can be recovered and reused in new batteries.
So how much will Andrade make off this particular deal?
"The good thing with these is, they'll at least take them at no expense," he says of the battery recycler.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in