Late last year Boris Johnson announced his intention to kickstart an 'electric vehicle revolution' in his bid to help the UK meet its net zero carbon targets.
Ahead of the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030 all new homes and buildings will have to install electric vehicle charging points, while new measures will be introduced to make it easier to go electric.
But one major stumbling block is getting hold of enough lithium, a key component in the batteries of electric vehicles. Enough to power 10,000 iPhones is needed for just one electric car and there's a global shortage, making it more expensive.
On top of that the current methods of producing lithium, often from water found in underground aquifers in South America, are slow and inefficient as well as being bad for the environment.
Watercycle Technologies, a 'spin-out' firm from the University of Manchester, may just have developed an answer that could make this problem a lot easier to tackle.
The company founded by Seb Leaper, a former PhD student, used new technology to treat and extract valuable minerals from waste water.
