Charge, Use, Recycle, Repeat: Building a Circular Battery Economy

Global economy needs ‘fundamental restructuring’ to achieve

Circularity Gap Report 2025 shows that secondary material use increased to 7.3 billion tonnes in 2021, but is outpaced by the growing consumption of hard-to-recycle virgin resources. Beth Jones Beth Jones - Materials Industry Waste Management Resource Use Breadcrumb Section Materials Main Magazine Feature 0 Remove Mag Cover bottom Date (Materbi) Thursday, May 15, 2025 Keywords Circular economy, Circularity Gap Report 2025, Circular…

Charge, Use, Recycle, Repeat: Building a Circular Battery Economy

Batteries rely on a combination of dominant raw materials—lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and graphite—much of which is derived from mining activity. Mining is not only carbon-intensive but also linked with water pollution, habitat destruction, and, in some regions, severe human rights violations. Take cobalt, for example: over 70% of worldwide cobalt comes from the..