CARSON CITY, July 9 — The lithium-ion battery recycling industry is quietly transforming how America powers its electric vehicles, turning yesterday’s dead battery packs into tomorrow’s raw materials. At the center of this shift sits Redwood Materials, a company founded in 2017 by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel that now processes 6,000 tons of batteries annually at its Nevada facility. Here’s what that tonnage means in plain terms: those are batteries that would otherwise end up in landfills or require new mining to replace.
Instead, advanced recycling processes — specifically hydrometallurgical and direct recycling — can recover up to 95% of valuable materials including lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese. Think of it like a refinery that runs in reverse, pulling out the concentrated metals that battery makers need most.
The economics are shifting fast
The global lithium-ion battery recycling market was valued at $6.5 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach $35.1 billion by 2031, according to Allied Market Research. That growth trajectory reflects a simple reality: the electric vehicle market sold 10.5 million units globally in 2022, and every one of those cars contains a battery pack that will eventually need recycling. Redwood Materials doesn’t just take old batteries.
The company also processes manufacturing scrap from battery producers, then supplies the recovered materials back to companies like Panasonic and Tesla. It’s a closed-loop model that reduces the need for new mining, which carries significant environmental costs.
In 2022, Redwood announced a $2 billion expansion to build a battery materials campus in Charleston, South Carolina. That facility represents a bet that domestic recycling capacity will be essential as EV adoption grows and as companies seek to secure supply chains outside of traditional mining regions.
Government backing for innovation
The U.S. Department of Energy launched its Battery Recycling Prize in 2019, awarding $5.5 million across multiple phases through 2023 to spur innovation in collection, sorting, and processing technologies. The prize program reflects a recognition that recycling infrastructure has lagged behind battery production capacity. The practical upshot for ordinary readers: the battery in an electric vehicle isn’t a dead end.
It’s more like a refillable cartridge. The materials inside — particularly cobalt and lithium, which are expensive and geopolitically concentrated — can be recovered and reused rather than mined fresh from the ground.
Redwood’s Carson City facility processes 6,000 tons of batteries annually as of 2023. That number will need to grow substantially to match the volume of batteries expected to reach end-of-life in the coming decade. The South Carolina campus, announced in 2022 as a $2 billion project, is designed to scale that capacity significantly.
What to watch next
The recycling industry faces a timing challenge. Most EVs on the road today are still relatively new, meaning the wave of retired batteries hasn’t fully arrived. Companies like Redwood are building capacity now, betting that the flow of spent batteries will accelerate sharply in the late 2020s and early 2030s.
For battery producers, recycled materials offer a hedge against price volatility and supply disruptions. For the environment, the technology reduces the footprint of mining operations that extract lithium, cobalt, and nickel from the earth.
And for the EV market, which sold 10.5 million units globally in 2022, recycling infrastructure is becoming a prerequisite for long-term sustainability claims. The recovery rate of up to 95% for key materials means that a battery pack retired today can supply most of the raw materials for a new one. That’s the kind of circular economy that manufacturers and policymakers have been chasing for years — and it’s now operating at commercial scale in Nevada.
