Recycled Tech

I've oft wondered where all of the techie stuff consumers purchase - from electric cars to smartphones - go once their lifespan is over. Knowing that the world's most coveted metals, are used in batteries, must somehow be reclaimed or not?

Listing of Rare Earth Elements

Batteries are unclean. They contain all sorts of toxic chemicals and metals. For example, a Tesla, uses huge lithium ion batteries that weigh thousands of pounds. These batteries are dirty to make and when their life is over, about 5 years or so, they must be disposed of into a toxic waste dump. Not very green. In fact, these batteries negate any reduction in greenhouse gas admissions and wind-up having a larger pollution factor than fossil fuel operated vehicles.

There is reclamation occurring, as waste companies around the world, sort through piles of lithium-ion batteries from cars to laptops. Termed "urban mining", this reclamation is increasing as the hunt for cobalt, lithium, and rare earth metals needed to produce batteries is causing a global shortage of these key elements.

For example, electronic waste reclamation was valued at $18.8b in South Korea in 2016 , meeting roughly 22% of S. Korea's total rare earth metals demand.  These reclaimed metals are now part of the supply chain for two of the world's major battery makers, Samsung and LG. Spent lithium-ion batteries and electronic components are recycled to extract lithium phosphate, cobalt, nickel, gold, and other metals.

Electric cars use thousands of pounds of lithium-ion batteries

This is all great, but the demand for batteries increases each day. China, the biggest user of rare earth metals goes to countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Chile to fulfill its appetite. Reclamation helps but the need is huge and with that demand has come higher prices. For example, cobalt prices have seen a 4x increase in the last two years.

There is a lot of research going on to come up with a substitute for lithium-ion batteries but so far nothing that can be commercialized. Within the next decade a replacement must occur: first, because of the negative impact on the environment and secondly, because they are not called rare earth elements for nothing.


Jim Lavorato, Principal
Fund-House Ventures, LLC