[yungchin]

Nasty economics at work: the price of lithium is low enough that recycling is not really cost-effective, so most of them end up in landfill (including the nickel and cobalt components...). But recycling is actually possible so enough publicity may bring people around. Tesla eg does care about recycling: http://www.theguardian.com/vital-signs/2015/jun/10/tesla-bat...

[m_eiman]

I find it weird that it might be cheaper to extract metals from the ground than to reuse the stuff we've already dug up once… Shouldn't it be cheaper to separate the metals much the same way as it's done at a mine, just with a much higher concentration of useful stuff?

[yungchin]

If we all came around to taxing mining externalities as we should, then yes. Currently the carbon footprint of mining the lithium and all the other havoc around it are not correctly priced in. So now recycling looks bad, because moving batteries back to a recycling centre involves relatively more human labour, and without accounting for externalities, human labour apparently turns out the most expensive bit.