Recycling is good. Those empty beverage cans we turn in at the supermarket come back to us, newly reformed and filled with our favorite drinks – all at about 1/10th the energy cost of making the cans from fresh bauxite and generating all the electricity necessary for new aluminum stock. Besides, aluminum ore is a limited resource, and finding and mining fresh supplies is ever harder and more expensive. Lithium is an even more severe problem. Used rechargeable batteries other scarce minerals such as cobalt, manganese and lithium-based electrolytes. Most of the world’s supply of lithium seems to be in places not necessarily allied with U. S. interests. Battery University says 70-percent of the world’s supply is in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Australia and China. Bolivia’s salt flats are in a mostly inaccessible area and would require building of major roads and extraction facilities. Unfortunately that country is not on good terms with the United States. China will want to protect its …
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