Shared micromobility firm Lime has reached an settlement to ship batteries utilized in its scooters and e-bikes to Redwood Materials, which can extract and recycle essential minerals corresponding to lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper.
The settlement introduced Monday makes Redwood Materials the unique battery recycling associate for Lime’s shared scooters and e-bikes positioned in cities all through the United States, Germany and The Netherlands. The settlement doesn’t cowl each area through which Lime operates, a listing that features cities all through Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Lime has had different recycling partnerships up to now, notably with Sprout through its downstream distributors. However, that is the primary time the shared micromobility firm has had a direct relationship with a battery recycler in North America that can straight course of materials for restoration and return it to the provision chain.
Redwood Materials, the Carson City, Nevada-based startup based by former Tesla CFO JB Straubel, will get well supplies from the batteries as soon as they’ll not be used. Once recovered and recycled, the supplies shall be reintroduced within the battery manufacturing course of. This closed-loop manufacturing system — which may cut back demand for mining and refining minerals — is on the coronary heart of Redwood Materials enterprise mannequin.
The effort additionally aligns with Lime’s personal sustainability objectives. Lime has a purpose to decarbonize its enterprise by 2030. The firm has made progress in decreasing Scope 1, 2, and three emissions by 59.5% in 5 years from its 2019 baseline years. Lime plans to report its 2024 Carbon Emissions leads to May.
“This collaboration marks vital progress in direction of establishing a extra round provide chain, serving to guarantee our batteries usually are not solely responsibly recycled as soon as they attain their finish of life, however that their supplies are returned into the battery provide chain,” Andrew Savage, VP for Sustainability at Lime mentioned in a press release.
Lime additionally has partnerships with Gomi within the UK and VoltR in France and different European international locations to reap these viable battery cells for “second life” functions, together with for shopper electronics, corresponding to transportable audio system and battery packs, amongst different makes use of.
Redwood Materials has agreements with different micromobility firms, together with Lyft, Rad Power Bikes, and Specialized to recycle their e-bike and scooter batteries. Redwood, which has raised greater than $2 billion in non-public funds, introduced earlier this month it has opened an R&D heart in San Francisco.
