How Electric Cars Contribute To E-Waste Problems – SlashGear

A future defined by battery-powered cars, of course, is going to be one that is beset by a significant problem: How can those batteries be created and recycled in a green fashion? As Elsevier’s Christina Valimaki put it, according to Wired, in 2018, “one of the biggest environmental problems caused by our endless hunger for the latest and smartest devices is a growing mineral crisis, particularly those needed to make our batteries.”

Wired also noted that mining lithium by pumping water (evaporitic extraction being one of the most common methods of acquiring it) cost around half a billion gallons of water for a single tonne of the metal. Tragically and inevitably, we’re also extracting it at a devastating, unsustainable pace. According to Earthworks, Nickel and Cobalt are also crucial elements of such batteries, and the push towards electric vehicles and other such devices pushes our need for these metals far beyond the supplies the planet may hold: a potential 426% of available resources in the case of the latter.

The widening of mining efforts as these resources deplete, accordingly, increases the cost to the environment. The metals that are components in these batteries, further, means that they should not simply be tossed away. The EPA defines them as critical minerals, “raw materials that are economically and strategically important to the U.S., have a high risk of their supply being disrupted and for which there are no easy substitutes.”