<aside> 👉 In the following, we will help you understand our intrinsic motivation on why we started tozero… to truly bring lithium ion battery waste tozero!
</aside>
Electrification will cause an explosion in Lithium-Ion Battery (LiB) production and associated waste. By 2030 Europe alone will face:
↑>40x LiB material demand: Recycling will become an imperative from an environmental and security of supply standpoint.
Most people neglect the fact that while producing LiBs, 10-20% (some OEMs have even 30-40% in the ramp up phase) is production scrap that needs to be recycled immediately. Therefore, most of the LiB waste will derive directly from production itself:
More pressing, Europe’s ambition for electrification and increasing the LiB production results in a shockingly high dependence on mining countries - this results in real geopolitical and ESG tension for Europe. We have to source the typical materials in the following areas:
Lithium: >60% mined in Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina next to Australia and China - causing droughts threatening local farming and vegetation.
Cobalt: >65% sourced from DR Congo, much of it by hand and employing children under loose regulations.
**Nickel: **continuously underlies highly volatile pricing and material shortages, as seen of sanctioned Russia with >20% world’s supply.
Graphite: ~80% sourced from China and we are already facing deficit while demand is expecting 30% CAGR.
Due to this, Governments, like the European Commission or USA, have officially claimed these materials as “critical”.
<aside> 💡 **Critical materials are…
while they are subject to supply risk and for which there are no easy substitutes.
</aside>
The future of clean technologies and infrastructure relies on the supply and access to the “critical materials” that we will recover.
In conclusion, we want to recycle LiBs and recover the critical materials to ease the above mentioned dramatically increasing sourcing and supply chain constraints.