The environmental impacts of electric vehicle batteries range from mining, and energy and water use to the hazards of discarded batteries. These issues can be resolved, but there’s no time to waste.
As toxic water continues to spill from tailings ponds across mining developments, decades of scientific research provides evidence of how wildlife will be affected.
Lithium extraction in Bolivia poses more than environmental questions: It illustrates how notions about ‘raw materials’ can be at odds with Indigenous relations with the land.
Dignity is at the centre of many rights-based declarations, but to eradicate racist policy and practices, we must commit to noticing each other’s personhood in new ways.
A new process to quickly remove radioactive chemicals from water and other liquids and trap them in a clay-like substance could make nuclear waste management much easier.
The WA radioactive capsule was discovered within two weeks. But in 1980, when a mine worker was discovered to have stolen 2,200 kilograms of uranium oxide, it had been missing for 3 years.
Should the capsule not be found immediately, we can’t just write it off as lost. A long term system of monitoring is needed to protect humans and the environment.
Mining nodules from the deep ocean seabed could provide the metals crucial for today’s EV batteries and renewable energy technology, but little is known about the harm it could cause.