What does it cost to mine the lithium and cobalt in batteries?

Mining the lithium and cobalt in batteries costs water, land and, in some cobalt mines, people's safety and childhood, and the price is paid in different places for each metal. Batteries consume more than three-quarters of all lithium produced, and cobalt is primarily used in lithium-ion batteries too. Each has its own set of problems.

Lithium comes from ores and from brines, the salty water under salt flats. The Lithium Triangle, a region of the Andes spanning Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, was thought in 2017 to hold around 54 percent of the world's lithium reserves. In Chile's Salar de Atacama the brine is pumped into ponds and evaporated by the sun for up to a year and a half. That process needs large amounts of land and intensive water use, and in arid regions it could lead to unsustainable water consumption, at 1.9 million liters per ton. It has led to conflict over water with local communities. Producers dispute parts of the picture: Albemarle, a producer in the Atacama, has asserted that its water use is minimal compared with nearby copper mines.

Cobalt is usually a by-product of copper and nickel mining, and in 2024 the Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for more than 80 percent of production. Artisanal miners supplied 17 to 40 percent of the DRC's output as of 2016, and workers, officials and Washington Post reporters describe some 100,000 miners digging with hand tools and few safety measures. Child labor is used in artisanal cobalt mining, highlighted by activists and confirmed by journalists.

Responses have come from buyers and from chemistry. Apple stopped buying from suppliers sourcing from artisanal mines in 2017, and by 2020 battery makers had cut the cobalt in cathodes and brought in cobalt-free lithium iron phosphate batteries.