As mentioned elsewhere, these questions keep coming in to derail frank discussions of renewable energy, so a lot of people are tired of them because they are of

As mentioned elsewhere, these questions keep coming in to derail frank discussions of renewable energy, so a lot of people are tired of them because they are often used as an argument tactic not in good faith. Sometimes the question is "why not just google it yourself", though of course at this point because the questions are asked in such ways as to derail arguments that google is full of awful nonsense and bad faith versions of the answers so "just google it" isn't a great response either. - Lithium is the primary element and is primarily sourced from salt basins. It's not mined so much as it is skimmed from salt lake brines and such. It's in the top three elements in the periodic table which also puts it among the most common elements in the known universe. There are sometimes environmental concerns about lithium mining sometimes getting "chemical slurries" released into downstream water sources, but even (especially?) "cheap" mining operations want to avoid them because there are often other things they could sell if they recaptured those "slurries". - Cobalt is the only "rare earth metal" often involved in a shrinking minority of battery Lithium Ion compositions (many are Cobalt-free already or "mostly no Cobalt"). Despite the periodic table group name "rare earth metal", Cobalt is not that all that rare on Earth and for centuries was a "waste product" coming out of Nickel and Tin mines known mostly for its usefulness in blue paints (which is why the word "cobalt" is so associated with blue today). Nickel and tin mines aren't great, but people are always going to mine nickel and tin for their many, many uses. Cobalt is just going to keep being a "waste product" of that. But many Lithium Ion batteries don't need Cobalt any more in their formulations anyway. - Fire and emergency services are expected to get retraining on Lithium Ion batteries, but my understanding is mostly for high voltage concerns rather than extinguishing concerns. A classic car/marine battery is a Lead Acid composition, and far more toxic (lead poisoning; chemical/acid burns). It's also a lot lower voltage as most Lead Acid batteries can barely move 12 volts in a steady current. Lithium Ion batteries can deliver a lot more voltage faster and learning to safely disconnect the batteries is much more important (because the risk of an electric shock is much worse). To my understanding, once circuits are safely disconnected (and many large Lithium Ion battery packs have multiple redundant systems to do so as automatically as possible at this point) extinguishing fires is generally easier than a Lead Acid battery. - To my understanding: Lithium is easily recycled. It's a metal that forms salts easily. Cobalt is straight forward to recycle in most battery compositions, but rarely worth the effort economically (because Cobalt is a "waste product" of other mining). ETA: - Better than recycling is reuse. As far as we can tell the reuse cycles for lithium ion batteries are relatively extremely high. Very few EV car batteries have left their "primary usage" yet (as car batteries), even with just about a decade and a half of car sales already. Almost none of those that did move into "secondary usage" in grid storage or other secondary uses have left those roles/needed recycling. Right now it seems like large Lithium Ion batteries may have multiple decades of time in primary and secondary usages long before recycling is even a direct need. (Yes, directly in contrast to small Lithium Ion batteries people experience in phones/laptops. Size and heat management change a lot of the experience/expectations.)