Shared micromobility company Lime has reached an agreement to send batteries used in its scooters and e-bikes to Redwood Materials, which will extract and recycle critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper.
The agreement announced Monday makes Redwood Materials the exclusive battery recycling partner for Lime’s shared scooters and e-bikes located in cities throughout the United States, Germany and The Netherlands. The agreement doesn’t cover every region in which Lime operates, a list that includes cities throughout Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Lime has had other recycling partnerships in the past, notably with Sprout via its downstream vendors. However, this is the first time the shared micromobility company has had a direct relationship with a battery recycler in North America that will directly process material for recovery and return it to the supply chain.
Redwood Materials, the Carson City, Nevada-based startup founded by former Tesla CFO JB Straubel, will recover materials from the batteries once they can no longer be used. Once recovered and recycled, the materials will be reintroduced in the battery manufacturing process. This closed-loop manufacturing system — which can reduce demand for mining and refining minerals — is at the heart of Redwood Materials business model.
The effort also aligns with Lime’s own sustainability goals. Lime has a goal to decarbonize its business by 2030. The company has made progress in reducing Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions by 59.5% in five years from its 2019 baseline years. Lime plans to report its 2024 Carbon Emissions results in May.
“This collaboration marks significant progress towards establishing a more circular supply chain, helping ensure our batteries are not only responsibly recycled once they reach their end of life, but that their materials are returned into the battery supply chain,” Andrew Savage, VP for Sustainability at Lime said in a statement.
Lime also has partnerships with Gomi in the UK and VoltR in France and other European countries to harvest these viable battery cells for “second life” applications, including for consumer electronics, such as portable speakers and battery packs, among other uses.
Redwood Materials has agreements with other micromobility companies, including Lyft, Rad Power Bikes, and Specialized to recycle their e-bike and scooter batteries. Redwood, which has raised more than $2 billion in private funds, announced earlier this month it has opened an R&D center in San Francisco.