While the European Union worries about China's vast exports of cheap electric vehicles and imposes import quotas, the bloc also frets over Beijing's dominance in the supply of critical minerals used to build these vehicles. A fast-growing number of electric vehicles will soon be scrapped and replaced, and shredding their batteries yields black mass, a powder from which valuable metals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel can be recovered. From next month, the EU will make it harder to export this waste to encourage domestic processing, while America has already blocked black-mass exports.
China, however, is unlikely to suffer from these restrictions. With black mass projected to make up a significant share of global demand for battery metals by 2050 according to the International Energy Agency, China is supercharging its recycling industries. The goal is to shore up supplies of battery metals, rare-earths, and other materials, making the economy less linear and more circular so that recycled waste replaces raw materials.
While recycling efforts were once driven by pollution concerns, security has become the primary motive amid a global scramble for high-tech economy materials. China produces more municipal detritus and industrial waste than anywhere else in the world. After decades of importing foreign waste that created severe environmental damage and public anger, China declared a war on pollution in 2013 and launched a comprehensive national plan for a circular economy.
Major cities have rolled out mandatory household rubbish sorting, and the country banned all solid waste imports by 2021. Although poorer rural areas still face challenges with waste management and detailed national data remains scarce, officials have successfully cleaned up major urban centers. In July, Beijing released a blueprint for circular economy development through 2030, citing increasingly complex geopolitical dynamics and the prominent importance of resource security.
China intends to use recycling to supply millions of tonnes of industrial materials annually by 2030. While scaling up the recycling of steel, copper, and aluminium is relatively straightforward, managing a rising tide of electronic garbage from wind turbines, electric vehicle batteries, and solar panels presents a greater test. Because China manufactures vast quantities of these goods, factories can design products for easier dismantling, and major battery makers like CATL already operate massive recycling subsidiaries.
Despite building a dominant share of global battery-recycling capacity, significant hurdles remain. Much of China's recycling capacity is currently left unused because many spent batteries are diverted to informal scrap dealers or illegally collected by criminal gangs rather than being processed safely.