What are the emissions from recycling lithium ion batteries?
It depends on the route. Shredding to black mass uses mainly electricity; furnace routes add fuel and burn the graphite and electrolyte; chemical leaching routes use acids and reagents. Report per tonne of batteries processed, and state which route you use.
What to record
- Tonnes of batteries received.
- Electricity and fuel by process step.
- Reagents bought, for Scope 3.
- Output: black mass or recovered metals.
Claims
Recovered metals can lower a buyer's footprint compared with mined metal, but only with records of the recovery route and quantities.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads bills, fuel invoices and production records into dated, fingerprinted records, so the figure you send a buyer can be traced to its documents.
Sources: GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard, Central Pollution Control Board
Last reviewed 2026-10-22.