But the dandelion motif of the blog remains important. "Fishing for swordfish while surrounded by perch" was a label given to me 23 years ago, which I've embraced (or sometimes substitute dolphins for swordfish and tilapia for perch when it's a international audience)... the blog is sometimes discovered years later by someone important who will never see the Tweet or Linkedin hashtag. As bad as my blogs suffer from too many to sort, there are important reporters, researchers and policy makers out there who rely on Google or DuckDuckGo rather than the equally important Twitter search box.
The previous blog, my public submission for the General Mining Act, was important enough that I don't want to write anything to compete with it. The MassRecycle Podcast with Aaron Mintzes of Earthworks (the most important Mining Reform NGO) was also more important than much else I have to say.
But let me put two very important Mining / Recycling dilemmas on the Blog for September. Both are current. Lithium and Indium.
I'll briefly link the Lithium debate to better written posts by experts, but Adam himself helped promote my Lithium Battery WSJ article Linkedin post and Recycling International asked me to turn it into a guest editorial. Hans Eric Melin also wrote a more astute post on the dilemma, which is as follows.
1. The carbon / global warming challenge demands more Electric Vehicles #EVs*(see footnote)
2. The EVs demand Lithium Batteries
3. There is not enough Lithium refining to manufacture the currently planned EV manufacturing.
4. Europe and USA (Biden's "inflation bill") are trying to solve the shortage by investing in RECYCLING of replaced electric vehicle batteries.
5. The batteries are not there, largely because they are being REUSED, and the investments in meeting demand with recycling reflect the same false assumptions Europe and USA generated for CRTs in the late 1990s and flip phones in the first decade of Y2k.
6. The wealthy OECD nations buying most of the #ElectricVehicles demand the two tons of car travel 150 miles between charges - and the battery is replaced because it goes less than 100 miles between charges.
7. A Secondhand Lithium Battery that will push two tons of metal a mere 75 miles between charges has WAY MORE REUSE LIFE and demand than the battery recycling investments will be able to pay.
8. Just as "Big Shred" funded reuse of flip phones and CRT monitors as "primitive" and "polluting", the new Lithium Battery Recycling industry will probably feel forced to denigrate the secondhand solar panel recycling market.
Here again is a 42 year old solar panel put to reuse by Good Point Recycling in Middlebury Vermont. It's powering a radio (symphony cuts out when my shadow passes the panel), a desk lamp, and is charging a mobile phone. It would make zero sense for the homeowner not to replace this with a newer more efficient panel, AND it also makes no sense to ban it from reuse in Africa. The millions of solar panels that will be upgraded will drive demand for used, secondhand EV batteries. COUNT ON IT.
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