Li-Cycle, a significant figure in electric vehicle battery recycling, recently filed for bankruptcy protection in both the U.S. and Canada, underscoring challenges in establishing recycling facilities. The company aimed to create a hub in Rochester, N.Y., capable of recycling critical minerals like lithium, yet has faced operational hurdles, reflecting a broader issue of insufficient regulatory support. With over 600,000 EVs in Canada, experts stress that without structured policies to facilitate this market, the impending influx of used batteries could lead to environmental crises and unutilized resources.
"There really is no regulatory or policy regime around this in North America," said Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental and urban change at Toronto's York University and co-chair of the school's Sustainable Energy Initiative. "It's a Wild West."
The planned hub would have been able to extract lithium and other critical minerals from recycled material to actually build new EV batteries a crucial step that North American recyclers haven't achieved on a commercial scale yet.
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