From New York Times reporters By Peter S. Goodman, Will Fitzgibbon and Samuel Granados
Following the tradition of Upton Sinclair's 1906 classic gotcha expose "The Jungle", Goodman, Fitzgibbon, and Granados have found a very legitimate way to make environmentalists feel bad about recycled content in auto batteries.
Recycling Lead for U.S. Car Batteries Is Poisoning People
It's much easier for reporters to visit lead recycling operations than it is to visit the only alternative to recycled content lead batteries - which is lead batteries made from mining lead ore and smelting it in a huge primary lead smelter. The lead in an old car battery is 100% lead. The lead in virgin lead-zinc ore mined from mountains ranges from less than one percent to eight percent lead content.
Consequently (math!) primary lead smelters are about 25% larger / more active than secondary, or recycled, lead smelters. But the production of lead from virgin mining operations - like Perkoa in Burkina Faso, Africa - is really hard to get to, hard to photograph, and stays quiet, not claiming any environmental advantage.
So if the story was about nutrition, Goodman, Fizgibbon and Granados would be reporting on urban food coops, not on cannabilism, because it's going to grab the attention of NYTimes readers. That's very typical of journalism, and it has a value in forcing improvement at recycling facilities and urban food cooperatives. We appreciate criticism and the opportunity to improve.
But when not a word or sentence anywhere about the difference between mining and recycling lead acid batteries. Therefore, it is criminally negligent in context.
FACT: United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates 73% of USA auto batteries are recycled content rather than mined content.
Recycling: In 2019, about 1.2 million tons of secondary lead was produced, an amount equivalent to 73% of apparent domestic consumption. Nearly all secondary lead was recovered from old scrap, mostly lead-acid batteries. Import Sources (2015–18): Refined metal: Canada, 44%; Mexico, 18%; Republic of Korea, 17%; India, 5%; and other, 16%.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2020/mcs2020-lead.pdf
That's a lot of content right there in that paragraph. It leaves a lot of mental gymnastics to do to tie automobile scrap generated in Africa, removed in African scrap markets, smelted in African secondary smelters, and sold on the London Metals Exchange as metal, to responsibility to USA car manufacturers. #DataJournalism called, they want their focus back.
