The Lion's Pride Volume 9 (January 2018) | Page 70

Fig. 2. This rendering shows the basic components of the lithium-ion cell. (Visual Capitalist, infographic) The mining processes currently being used to gather the rare earths to build these battery cells are extremely taxing on the planet. Lizzie Wade, an editor at Wired magazine, sums this up well: Rare metals only exist in tiny quantities and inconvenient places— so you have to move a lot of earth to get just a little bit. In the Jiangxi rare-earth mine in China, workers dig eight-foot holes and pour ammonium sulfate into them to dissolve the sandy clay. Then they haul out bags of muck and pass it through several acid baths; what’s left is baked in a kiln, leaving behind the rare earths required by everything from our phones to our Teslas. At this