Lithium is relatively rare, and very environmentally damaging to mine. Recycling is absolutely a must, but, as with any recycling, the recovery is not 100%. Of course, greater harm comes with large-scale applications like cars (lithium batteries are part of why electric cars are NOT eco-friendly vehicles they’re often advertised to be) and home/grid power storage, but reducing the harm where possible is essential.
Sodium is obviously hugely abundant and we already have relatively eco-friendly salt mining for many centuries.
Lithium is relatively rare, and very environmentally damaging to mine. Recycling is absolutely a must, but, as with any recycling, the recovery is not 100%. Of course, greater harm comes with large-scale applications like cars (lithium batteries are part of why electric cars are NOT eco-friendly vehicles they’re often advertised to be) and home/grid power storage, but reducing the harm where possible is essential.
Sodium is obviously hugely abundant and we already have relatively eco-friendly salt mining for many centuries.
“relatively” does a lot of work here. Lithium is not going to be a scarce ressource any time soon: https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-lithium.pdf
TIL.
Thanks for sharing!
Environmental point still stands, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impacts_of_lithium-ion_batteries