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This sort of recycling will never be competitive or viable compared with the economies of scale present in the mining industry. It’s just amazing what they will

This sort of recycling will never be competitive or viable compared with the economies of scale present in the mining industry. It’s just amazing what they will do to completely destroy other competitors (other mines). They aren’t concerned about recyclers and laugh about them because of how small and boutique they are in terms of volumes but I’ve seen companies do things like run a mine at a loss for years to snuff out competitors, or buy up broke recyclers and shut them down or fold them into their current operations (read: defund their budgets and run a skeleton operation) so they can get certain government benefits, comply with regulations all the while protecting the volumes from their mining operations. Investing in recycling means competing directly with the mines which are highly consolidated and incredibly powerful. They do not care about recycling by the nature and culture of their businesses. It’s a fool’s errand and I’ve seen so many investors loose their entire investment over and over again. If you like loosing money, by all means, invest in recycling. At the end of the day these recycling businesses are undesirable —- they are capital intensive, high risk, low yield with a weak consumer market. They are most definitely not carbon neutral in their end to end operations. They don’t even typically provide good paying jobs for the communities they serve because the unit economics are so poor. The only 10+ year surviving companies exist almost entirely on government subsidies and aren’t real businesses. Communities don’t want them either so that’s why they are always in the middle of nowhere. All the private activities are all the same — typically some VC or rich investor will pair up with a charismatic founders and try to do it because hey environment I feel good doing good. But then just wait a few years when they get tired of shoveling money in by the truckload. The joke goes for every $1 of material recycled, $10 of cash is burned.

alkonaut 4y ago
Quick searches seem to suggest the processing is about $100 per ton with resulting materials worth several times that. Do you have any figures comparing mining vs recycling for these materials? And more interestingly, trends for those numbers? I imagine the recycling costs will improve due to increasing supply of input materials while the cost of mining will remain the same or even increase (as available resources shrink)?
jojobas 4y ago
Which bears the question- how different are spent batteries from refined lithium ore? Can you just mix them into the ore at 1-10 parts per 100?
pyrale 4y ago
...And then you end up with mafias burning e-waste in illegal landfills. Sure, processing used material is expensive, but all that's mined has to be disposed of, and if it's not expensive, it's most likely fuelling criminal organizations.
jacquesm 4y ago
This is why there should be a resource extraction tax instead of a value added tax.
- Our_Benefactors 4y ago
  Yes, if we give the government 10x more tax per electric vehicle then recycling suddenly has none of these problems and is instantly solved. If it’s cheaper to mine, then mine. I won’t weep for the cobalt and lithium piles.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    It's not about cost, it is about protecting the planet and every resource that is extracted that could be recycled is never coming back.
    - Our_Benefactors 4y ago
      > and every resource that is extracted that could be recycled is never coming back This is better read as “and never will be in the current economic climate”. It’s not like the used batteries are launched into space.
themitigating 4y ago
It's worth a loss to protect the environment
thehappypm 4y ago
I mean, recycling something cheap like plastic is generally a waste of time, it’s hard to argue anything else. But, whole industries exist around scrapping metals, and extracting gold from old electronics is lucrative. Lithium is more valuable than most metals that have healthy scrapping industries, so I disagree that it’s never going to work.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Plastic recycling is generally rated by Lifecycle Cost Analysis as a good thing. It's cheaper and better for the environment and saves carbon, compared with incineration (which is okay if it displaces fossil fuels and filters pollutants) which in turn is better than landfill. The main input for plastics is currently fossil fuels so there's a lot of misinformation about it, as there is for anything else that would harm fossil fuel sales. Ironically, they seem to have just given more momentum to the push to ban single use plastics and reduce its use generally. Propagandists that used to say recycling plastic didn't work are now promoting it to fend off outright bans. The only thing that remains consistent in their approach is "what benefits fossil fuel interests?".

alkonaut 4y ago

Quick searches seem to suggest the processing is about $100 per ton with resulting materials worth several times that. Do you have any figures comparing mining vs recycling for these materials? And more interestingly, trends for those numbers? I imagine the recycling costs will improve due to increasing supply of input materials while the cost of mining will remain the same or even increase (as available resources shrink)?

jojobas 4y ago

Which bears the question- how different are spent batteries from refined lithium ore? Can you just mix them into the ore at 1-10 parts per 100?

pyrale 4y ago

...And then you end up with mafias burning e-waste in illegal landfills. Sure, processing used material is expensive, but all that's mined has to be disposed of, and if it's not expensive, it's most likely fuelling criminal organizations.

jacquesm 4y ago

This is why there should be a resource extraction tax instead of a value added tax.

Our_Benefactors 4y ago
Yes, if we give the government 10x more tax per electric vehicle then recycling suddenly has none of these problems and is instantly solved. If it’s cheaper to mine, then mine. I won’t weep for the cobalt and lithium piles.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  It's not about cost, it is about protecting the planet and every resource that is extracted that could be recycled is never coming back.
  - Our_Benefactors 4y ago
    > and every resource that is extracted that could be recycled is never coming back This is better read as “and never will be in the current economic climate”. It’s not like the used batteries are launched into space.

themitigating 4y ago

It's worth a loss to protect the environment

thehappypm 4y ago

I mean, recycling something cheap like plastic is generally a waste of time, it’s hard to argue anything else. But, whole industries exist around scrapping metals, and extracting gold from old electronics is lucrative. Lithium is more valuable than most metals that have healthy scrapping industries, so I disagree that it’s never going to work.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Plastic recycling is generally rated by Lifecycle Cost Analysis as a good thing. It's cheaper and better for the environment and saves carbon, compared with incineration (which is okay if it displaces fossil fuels and filters pollutants) which in turn is better than landfill. The main input for plastics is currently fossil fuels so there's a lot of misinformation about it, as there is for anything else that would harm fossil fuel sales. Ironically, they seem to have just given more momentum to the push to ban single use plastics and reduce its use generally. Propagandists that used to say recycling plastic didn't work are now promoting it to fend off outright bans. The only thing that remains consistent in their approach is "what benefits fossil fuel interests?".