Companies Close the Loop in Recycling Electric Vehicle Batteries

Original article published on Bloomberg Government

June 25, 2019 – Maya Goldman

Companies like American Manganese Inc. and Li-Cycle Corp. are helping make recycling lithium-ion batteries more sustainable as the world moves toward using more electric vehicles.

The two companies are among those looking to develop new processes that increase the amount of materials that can be recovered from the batteries, which are used to power electric vehicles and provide stationary energy storage.

Both companies say it’s now possible to retrieve nearly all of the materials—including cobalt, lithium, and nickel.

This kind of “closed loop” recycling provides material for new batteries, and keeps plastics and metals out of landfills. Both are important as the demand for lithium-ion batteries is expected to boom.