Every March 18, Global Recycling Day reminds us of the key role of recycling in preserving resources and limiting the impact of our activities on the planet. In our news feeds and in the field, initiatives promoting material recovery are multiplying. Faced with the strain on critical resources, structuring sovereign recycling channels is an absolute necessity for Europe.
However, this injunction to “recycle everything” can lead to an ecological and economic contradiction: the premature destruction of products that are still rich in use value, destruction that often takes place outside the national or European territory.
In a coherent circular economy, recycling should not be the first instinct, but the answer chosen only when it is the most relevant in terms of the residual value of the product, after exploring other options that are more virtuous because they are more valuable: repair, reuse, reuse, remanufacture. This is particularly true for lithium batteries, whose cells often retain a high potential after a first life in mobility or storage for example.
This article proposes to clarify the place of recycling among the other loops of the circular economy, to explain the French and European regulatory framework, and then to illustrate why recycling too early amounts to destroying value and how to avoid it.
To understand the issue of “too soon”, it is first necessary to remove semantic confusion. The term “recycling” is often used incorrectly to refer to any ecological action. However, The circular economy distinguishes several treatment methods, each adapted to a given situation, which can be ordered according to a simple principle: preserve the maximum value already incorporated in the product.
These treatment methods are as follows:
These loops are often presented according to a strict “hierarchy”, and regulatory texts also use this term. The European Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC), revised by Directive 2018/851/EU) establishes an order of priority ranging from prevention to elimination, taken up in French law by the AGEC law of 2020.
But these same texts provide a fundamental nuance: this order of priority can be discarded for specific flows, “when justified by thinking in terms of a life cycle concerning the overall impacts of the production and management of this waste” (Directive 2008/98/EC, art. 4). In other words, recycling is not intrinsically inferior to other loops. It is the right answer when other options are not available.
What the regulations seek to preserve in reality is the value already incorporated into each product : the energy spent to manufacture it, the raw materials mobilized, the successive stages of transformation. The right end-of-use decision is therefore not one that respects a classification by principle, but one that preserves the maximum of this intrinsic value in the real conditions of the product. The European Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 illustrates this logic perfectly: it does not impose a rigid hierarchy, but explicitly encourages the reuse and reallocation of batteries or their components before they are recycled, precisely because the value of a cell greatly exceeds the sum of the value of its raw materials.
The recycling of a lithium-ion battery is done in two steps:
While the recycling of lithium batteries is necessary to secure our supplies of critical raw materials, it mechanically leads to an irreversible destruction of industrial value.
To measure this loss of value, one image is enough: recycling a battery that is still functional is like melting a car engine in perfect condition to recover the aluminum. The process eliminates numerous value creation steps (extraction, refining, synthesis of active cathode materials, cell manufacturing, pack assembly) to recover only a fraction, in the form of this Black Mass.
But the loss in value doesn't stop there. Black Mass produced in Europe is most of the time not refined on site. Due to the lack of sufficient industrial capacity to provide post-treatment on the continent, it is exported to Asia, mainly to South Korea, the historic destination of European Black Mass according to IFRI analyses, and to China, which represents 80% of the world's pre-treatment and post-treatment recycling capacities. There, the metals extracted (lithium, cobalt, nickel) are reintegrated into the manufacture of new battery cells, which will then be re-imported into Europe. This industrial paradox is striking: Europe grinds its own batteries, exports the resulting material to the other side of the world, finances the know-how of its competitors, and buys back the finished product.
The European Commission has become aware of the problem: since August 2025, A revision of European regulations on waste transfers prohibits the export of Black Mass to countries not members of the OECD, thus blocking flows to China and Southeast Asia. But South Korea, a member of the OECD, remains a legal and active destination. And even at the European level, Black Mass's refining capacities remain embryonic, as highlighted by a recent file (December 2025) from L'Usine Nouvelle. Without this industrial brick, even recycling carried out in Europe leads to the export of materials to Asia for the final valorization phase of Black Mass.
This picture reinforces the relevance of remanufacturing even more: a cell reassigned to Europe is a cell whose value remains on the continent, without intercontinental transport, without dependence on foreign know-how, and without emissions linked to thousands of kilometers of maritime freight. Recycling, even when done well, only solves part of the sovereignty equation. Remanufacture, on the other hand, solves it entirely.
It would be inaccurate to present recycling as systematically inferior to other circularity loops.. There are situations, well beyond the battery sector alone, where it is not only justified, but unavoidable.
For example:
In all these cases, recycling is not in itself an industrial failure: it is the relevant response when no other loop is possible. The mistake is not recycling. It's recycling without first checking if a better option exists.
Recycling is no longer a voluntary process. It is governed by a dense regulatory body, whose requirements have been accelerating since 2018 and now cover almost all industrial and household waste streams.
The centrepiece of this device is the European waste framework directive (2008/98/EC), deeply revised by Directive 2018/851/EU. It sets legally binding goals for the recycling of municipal waste: 55% by weight by 2025, 60% by 2030 and 65% by 2035. It is accompanied by sectoral texts that are just as demanding: the Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging requires 70% of packaging waste to be recycled by 2030, with targets by material (75% for paper-cardboard, 70% for glass, 50% for plastics). Plastics are also subject to specific recycled content obligations in new bottles: 25% by 2025, 30% by 2030. For textiles, a European EPR sector is being created under the impetus of the Directive (EU) 2025/1892, with national transposition expected by 2027.
In France, this European framework is transposed and amplified by two structuring laws:
However, it should be noted that these ambitious goals still come up against difficult realities on the ground. In 2024, the European Commission warned of the risk that several Member States, including France, would not meet the municipal waste recycling targets set for 2025. The French municipal waste recycling rate is around 46%, below the target of 55%. This observation highlights that regulation is a necessary accelerator, but not sufficient, and that industrial infrastructures, collection logistics and sector economic models must follow.
Among all the sectors concerned by these obligations, that of lithium batteries is the subject of an ambitious and recent regulatory framework. It is also a sector where the gap between the injunction to recycle and the logic of preserving value is glaring.
In France, the REP batteries sector has existed for several years. (art. L. 541-10-1 6° of the Environmental Code), entrusted to approved eco-organizations such as Corepile, Ecologic or Batribox. But the main novelty of the 2025 specifications is that they no longer content themselves with imposing collection and recycling objectives. They are now adopting the logic of preserving value by setting numerical goals for reuse and second life: 2% of batteries collected by 2027, then 5% by 2030. In other words, the law does not require systematic shredding. It encourages financially and legally to explore the second life before recycling.
Do you want to integrate remanufactured batteries into your equipment or intelligently valorize your end-of-life resources? No longer let your batteries go to the shredder prematurely. Contact the VoltR experts
On a continental scale, the European regulation (EU) 2023/1542, which came into force in August 2023, now covers the entire life cycle of a battery and goes well beyond collection goals alone. It imposes significant recycling yields by 2031 (95% recovery for cobalt and nickel, 80% for lithium), mandatory rates of incorporation of recycled materials in new batteries from 2030 and 2035, as well as a Battery Passport (digital passport tracking each battery, from the extraction of raw materials to its end of life). For fleet managers and equipment manufacturers, this last measure is particularly structuring: each battery must be documented and monitored until its end of life.
These objectives require significant investments in recycling infrastructures. The risk for manufacturers is then to give in to the easy way: direct all batteries to the shredder to reach their regulatory quotas. But the regulation itself provides for the opposite: it explicitly encourages reuse and reallocation before recycling, enshrining in European law the logic we are defending here.
This is where remanufacturing comes in. In practice, a significant portion of the batteries sent to be shredded today have not previously been subject to any health diagnosis (State of Health or SOH).
Take the case of light mobility (VAE, scooters). One ADEME study on the share of batteries in waste (2025) notes that a large part of their batteries at the end of their first life end up directly in the WEEE shredding lines.
However, after 4 years on a bike, a battery often shows an SOH of 80%. It lacks the “breath” for peak power on a coast, but the cells that compose it are still perfectly functional and maintain the of their original performance. They are perfectly suited to powering applications that are less demanding in power.. Recycling these cells without trying to reassign them means destroying a paid and imported asset, while ordering new cells (often from Asia) for the needs of manufacturers.
At VoltR, our job is to structure this essential intermediate stage. We don't compete with recyclers, we operate in waterfall :
The logic of maintaining the value of a product is not an ideological position. It produces measurable economic, environmental and strategic effects.
The first profit is accounting. Each time a component is reassigned rather than destroyed, the company saves all of the industrial value that this component contains: raw materials, processing energy, manufacturing time. In the automotive industry, manufacturers who have developed mechanical parts remanufacturing networks post production costs on these components that are 40 to 70% lower than new ones, while offering equivalent guarantees; this is what documents in particular The Ellen MacArthur Foundation's analysis of the Renault case. In the professional electronics sector, the remanufacture of medical equipment or industrial servers follows the same logic: the value is in the assembled component, not in the raw material.
The second benefit is environmental. The carbon footprint of a product is largely produced during its manufacture, long before it reaches the user's hands. Extending the life of a component means amortizing this initial footprint over a longer period of time, and avoiding the production of a new equivalent that would have generated the same footprint. Remanufacturing decarbonizes the supply chain much more effectively than recycling, because it avoids entire manufacturing rather than simply recycling the residues.
The third benefit is strategic, and it takes on a particular dimension in the current geopolitical context. Relocating components locally (in France or Europe) means partially freeing yourself from global supply chains, with their share of dependencies, deadlines and risks.
Finally, the fourth benefit relates to regulatory compliance, and it will be more and more decisive. Companies that are already structuring their second-life sectors are in early compliance with a regulatory body that will continue to strengthen: recycled content obligations, reuse objectives in REP specifications, Battery Passport for batteries and, eventually, product passports extended to other sectors as part of the European Ecodesign Regulation (ESPR). Anticipating is not only virtuous, it is industrially prudent.
Recycling is, and will remain, a non-negotiable condition for a sustainable industry. We need this supply chain to close the loop in the life of a product. But the hierarchy of the circular economy reminds us that shredding should never become a reflex by default.
Recycling too early means giving up years of use, destroying financial value and increasing our global carbon footprint.
On this World Recycling Day, the message is clear: recycling is essential, but only after everything has been done to extend the life of the product. The real ambition that should guide the circular economy is not to recycle more. It's just recycling.
VoltR is a French manufacturer of eco-designed lithium batteries.
Thanks to a rigorous industrial process and its advanced technology, VoltR recovers battery cells at the end of their first life, to reassign them into new batteries adapted to their residual performance.
VoltR is thus in a position to offer batteries made in France, eco-designed and as efficient as conventional batteries. This eco-responsible solution thus makes it possible to maximize the life of lithium batteries by giving them a second life.
VoltR aims to structure a European circular economy sector for lithium batteries in order to limit their environmental impact as much as possible.
