This is the correct way of thinking, and is widely applicable to many commonly recycled materials. Wood, aluminum, steel, and some plastics can be efficiently p

This is the correct way of thinking, and is widely applicable to many commonly recycled materials. Wood, aluminum, steel, and some plastics can be efficiently processed in this way. Battery materials and applications are different. They cannot be cheaply and easily melted down and re-used. The main constituents are all very similar and difficult to separate, and need to be separated extremely well in order to be used in battery applications. The lithium carbonate extraction is very telling. Lithium is #3 in the periodic table. The remaining elements that we would want to extract occupy every number from #24 through #30. The reason that they are extracting cheap lithium and none of the heavy, expensive elements, is that more process development needs to be done. In light of the above, creating a facility to grind up batteries does not represent much progress towards the core problem, and is not a particularly large step in the right direction. It would be like making a facility to grind up plastic, without having a process in place to recycle the plastic. It's great, but you need more, much more.