A bit more for all you eco car bods.
Lithium
Some of the largest lithium deposits on the planet reside in Mexico, South America and East ****. In these poor parts of the globe, environmentally damaging mining operations can go unchecked in the name of fueling desperate economies.
To create a lithium battery, you need lithium carbonate. This concentrated material comes as the result of refining a raw “soup” of lithium-containing salts in evaporation pools.
Pools of mineral-rich brine (water with high concentrations of salt) are left to evaporate until the solid salts can be filtered out. The process is water-intensive, using up to 500,000 gallons of water per ton of lithium carbonate produced.
Making matters worse, the process of refining lithium also uses toxic chemicals like hydrochloric acid, which can leach into local ecosystems and habitats.