Electric vehicles may be cleaner than gasoline or diesel fuel cars and trucks. That doesn't mean they're clean. Their batteries depend on toxic metals whose mining and improper disposal cause environmental degradation, not to mention child-labor abuses in source countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
For the last 5 years, a Nevada company run by a Tesla co-founder has been attempting to address such problems with a battery recycling center in Nevada. On Thursday, the company, Redwood Materials, announced a used battery collection program for California, with Ford and Volvo as project-launch partners.
The automakers will work with their own dealers and with battery dismantlers to package and transport dead or near-dead electric vehicle batteries by truck to Redwood's plant in Carson City. There, battery materials such as cobalt and copper will be extracted and transformed into new battery parts, then sold to battery makers — starting with Panasonic's battery plant in Sparks, Nev.
