The biggest EV battery recycling plant in the US is open for business
Pretty pathetic "recycling":
1. 80-90% of input is not even batteries, it's scrap from woefully inefficient and low yield battery cell manufacturing 
2. "Recycling" consists of mechanical shredding to combine all of the copper, aluminum, steel, cathode materials, anode materials 
3. A single extraction process pulls out lithium carbonate, the rest is saved for the future as "black mass" for as yet nonexistent processes to pull out the valuable cobalt, nickel, manganese, phosphorus, graphite.<p>The approach taken is practical, but kind of stupid. We want to physically separate these materials, so let's grind them into a well mixed aqueous slurry, then let the process chemists loose to solve it with science.<p>Particulate contamination of new or recycled battery materials with iron particles is a particular concern. Grinding the steel battery casings will not help.<p>The failure isn't with the battery recyclers, we shouldn't blame them. The issue is that consumers pay $0.05 per cell to recycle cells which at the moment are not recyclable, and we all see it as OK. I got my Tesla, ... you. So, as a result, there is zero incentive to consider the full product life cycle when designing cells.