TeardownOctober 1, 2026
India’s e-waste tax notice: paperwork is not a material balance
Reported allegations involving appliance companies reveal why invoices, recycling certificates and physical processing need separate verification.
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Explainers, teardowns, and myth-busting on waste management systems and green engineering.
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Teardown posts
TeardownSeptember 29, 2026
Seventeen towers recover caesium and rubidium — from ore waste, not batteries
The reported recoveries are impressive; feedstock, solvent balances and independently checked operating data determine their meaning.
TeardownSeptember 19, 2026
The "AI Will Create 40 to 60 Times More E-Waste" Claim, Examined
The Basel Action Network's projection is arithmetically defensible and widely misread. Most of the forecast tonnage is not servers.
TeardownSeptember 11, 2026
R3 Lithium in Covington: A $15M Series A Moving Into a $150M Building
R3 Lithium is taking over battery recycling capacity in Covington, Georgia that Ascend Elements spent far more to build. The asset is real. The question is whether the funding matches what refining lithium to spec actually costs.
TeardownSeptember 8, 2026
"Plasma and lemon juice" recycles batteries — the headline is doing a lot of work
Rice University reports ~95% recovery of critical metals using citric acid. The chemistry is genuinely clever. The framing around it — the lemon, the 10% figure, the record — does not survive a close read.
TeardownSeptember 7, 2026
The EU Right to Repair Covers Less Than the Headlines Suggest
The directive is a real obligation with real teeth. It also applies to a short list of product categories, and the biggest driver of e-waste volume — cheap devices with glued-in batteries — largely sits outside it.
TeardownSeptember 6, 2026
tozero's Acid-Free Battery Recycling: Strong Chemistry, Small Numbers
A pilot plant recovering lithium without mineral acid is a genuine contribution. The gap between pilot tonnage and the volume of batteries reaching end of life this decade is three orders of magnitude.
TeardownAugust 26, 2026
Two "direct recycling" startups just got $150M from DOE
Nth Cycle took $100M and Princeton NuEnergy $50M out of the DOE's $500M battery round. Both have operating plants and third-party numbers — which is more than most. Neither has solved the part a grant cannot buy: feedstock.
TeardownAugust 12, 2026
ERI Vietnam: a good partner, an unproven loop
A 50/50 e-waste venture between a large US recycler and a Vietnamese environmental-services group has real operational strengths. What it does not yet have is a plant, a permit, a mass balance or a named downstream buyer.
TeardownJuly 31, 2026
China Deletes the Second-Life Battery Rulebook
On 30 July, MIIT abolished the announcement-management system for cascade use of retired EV batteries. Not a ban on reuse — the removal of the official channel that made reuse financeable.