Despite decades of evidence on the toxic effects of lead battery recycling, companies opted not to act and blocked efforts to clean up the industry.
Despite decades of evidence on the toxic effects of lead battery recycling, companies opted not to act and blocked efforts to clean up the industry.
EV batteries are mostly aluminum, some lithium , carbon as graphite, small amount of cobalt and nickel. None of these are as toxic as lead, but proper lead recycling is not toxic.
But this is how some people are recycling lead batteries.
Currently my understanding of lion recycling is they grind it, dump it into a slurry, and some of the metals are recovered and the rest is a toxic soup. Mostly because the recycling is very much under development.
I think that the lesson we can draw from this is that the current system of auto recycling needs more guidelines as we move forward with EVs.