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I really hope Lithium recycling isn't like plastic recycling: sell it to China and then end up screwed when they stop buying it. Plastic recycling has pretty m

I really hope Lithium recycling isn't like plastic recycling: sell it to China and then end up screwed when they stop buying it. Plastic recycling has pretty much been a multi-decade lie. Let's not bone ourselves with Lithium. Who am I kidding, humans are great at boning themselves.

m0zg 5y ago
IIRC it's not "recycling" at all - they'd just bury the plastic in China instead of here. Much like we've "reduced emissions" by moving all industrial production to China which is almost completely un-regulated in terms of emissions until 2030. It's as though people think that atmospheric emissions are somehow confined to the country which emits them, rather than affect the entire planet.
not2b 5y ago
I don't see why it would be at all like plastic recycling: plastic "recycling" was never practical because there are too many kinds of plastic and making new plastic is so much cheaper. When the Chinese were buying it they were landfilling most of it in exchange for payments to take it off of our hands. On the other hand, aluminum recycling works very well.
- lrem 5y ago
  I'm slightly surprised by landfilling plastic. I hear it's pretty high calorie, up to the point of being energy-positive to burn it with filtering out the fumes. Is it just not enough to make this money-positive when accounting for handling?
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Some places do have energy and material recovery facilities next to their landfills that try to extract useful metal and useful energy from trash.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    I believe Japan does this, but there are dioxins all over the place there.
    - fomine3 5y ago
      Dioxins were become problem in 90s so smaller incinerator is banned and now incinerators must run on high temperature (> 800C) for not to emit dioxins. Emissions are also must be measured.
      - londons_explore 5y ago
        There are plenty of manmade chemicals that don't break down at 800C. For example F-C bonds... We really ought to be incinerating things at 3000C, but so far we haven't been able to engineer machines to do this without melting themselves...
        fomine3 5y ago
        Of course not every material can be burned but still fine.

m0zg 5y ago

IIRC it's not "recycling" at all - they'd just bury the plastic in China instead of here. Much like we've "reduced emissions" by moving all industrial production to China which is almost completely un-regulated in terms of emissions until 2030. It's as though people think that atmospheric emissions are somehow confined to the country which emits them, rather than affect the entire planet.

not2b 5y ago

I don't see why it would be at all like plastic recycling: plastic "recycling" was never practical because there are too many kinds of plastic and making new plastic is so much cheaper. When the Chinese were buying it they were landfilling most of it in exchange for payments to take it off of our hands. On the other hand, aluminum recycling works very well.

lrem 5y ago
I'm slightly surprised by landfilling plastic. I hear it's pretty high calorie, up to the point of being energy-positive to burn it with filtering out the fumes. Is it just not enough to make this money-positive when accounting for handling?
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Some places do have energy and material recovery facilities next to their landfills that try to extract useful metal and useful energy from trash.
- dnautics 5y ago
  I believe Japan does this, but there are dioxins all over the place there.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Dioxins were become problem in 90s so smaller incinerator is banned and now incinerators must run on high temperature (> 800C) for not to emit dioxins. Emissions are also must be measured.
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      There are plenty of manmade chemicals that don't break down at 800C. For example F-C bonds... We really ought to be incinerating things at 3000C, but so far we haven't been able to engineer machines to do this without melting themselves...
      - fomine3 5y ago
        Of course not every material can be burned but still fine.