AlbertVonMagnus t1_jegnq01 wrote on March 31, 2023 at 9:45 PM

Reply to comment by AviMkv in Inexpensive and environmentally friendly mechanochemical recycling process recovers 70% of lithium from batteries by chrisdh79

You could ask this about most products with salvageable materials, but you'd be surprised how often the answer is that the former option is cheaper.

It's a matter of the cost of the salvaging process compared to the value of salvaged materials, versus the cost-value from fresh mining.

AviMkv t1_jegrpym wrote on March 31, 2023 at 10:14 PM

Untrue, did you just pull this out your ass?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096232021000287

Why do you think apple makes their MacBooks out of 100% recycled aluminium, certainly not to save the planet. It's just cheaper.

AlbertVonMagnus t1_jegvtkk wrote on March 31, 2023 at 10:45 PM

As I said, it depend entirely on the products in question as well as the market. Aluminum is valuable enough to more than pay for salvaging costs for most products that contain a meaningful amount.

Glass meanwhile is currently not cost-effective because the value of salvaged glass has recently fallen below the salvaging cost, even though glass recycling was quite cost-effective in the past. The market is just as important as anything else here.

Solar panels are not cost effective at all to salvage as their components are not particularly valuable but are quite costly to salvage from the panels. Thus they are piling up in landfills wherever there are no regulations that require proper recycling.