What about the environmental damage and human rights abuses behind mining lithium and cobalt?

“You call EVs clean, but children are put to dangerous work in Africa to make their batteries, and water is running out in South America. Isn’t that worse than a petrol car?” This is the sharpest challenge to the environmental image of electric cars, and it contains facts that must not be brushed aside. Mining cobalt and lithium does involve serious abuses of human rights and serious environmental damage. Even for someone who supports EVs, admitting that squarely is where honesty starts.

With that said, the answer comes in three layers: (1) the human rights and environmental problems of cobalt and lithium mining are real and serious, (2) technically, the shift to batteries that use no cobalt is well under way, and (3) institutionally, supply-chain traceability and responsible sourcing, together with recycling that reduces how much is mined at all, are the routes towards a solution. Let’s take those in turn.

The reality to face: the shadow over cobalt and lithium

First, the facts. About 80% of the world’s cobalt reserves sit in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and part of the mining there is artisanal — small-scale and informal. The US Department of Labor estimates that at least 25,000 children work in the DRC’s cobalt mines, and dangerous conditions and forced labour have drawn international concern for years [1]. Amnesty International’s 2016 report pointed to cobalt from mines where child labour was suspected flowing into the batteries of major brands [1].

Lithium carries a different problem. Extracting it from the salt flats of Chile and Argentina uses large volumes of water in arid regions, with warnings about the effect on local water resources and on the lives of indigenous communities. Mining, in other words, can impose burdens on people and local environments quite apart from CO₂. Nobody can call EVs unconditionally clean while glossing over this.

Reducing it through technology: batteries without cobalt

So how does this get better? The first route is technology. For cobalt, the most troubled material, the shift to batteries that use none of it is moving quickly.

LFP (lithium iron phosphate) cells are at the centre of this. Built mainly from iron and phosphate, using neither cobalt nor nickel, they sidestep the human rights problem of cobalt mining by construction. Their energy density is somewhat lower, but they have improved steadily, and led by China they now account for a major share of EV batteries worldwide. Sodium-ion cells, which use no lithium either, are entering service too: the technology is shifting towards batteries built from commonplace materials.

The premise that an EV means dependence on cobalt is, in short, breaking down as technology advances. The solution is not only to mine a troubled material better, but increasingly not to use it at all.

Correcting it through rules: traceability and responsible sourcing

The second route is regulation — not leaving mines unattended, but tracking where and by whom a material was extracted, and excluding sourcing that fails the test.

The EU Battery Regulation mentioned earlier makes a battery passport, recording each battery’s materials, origin and history, mandatory from 2027, and requires supply-chain due diligence on human rights and the environment. The pressure that creates is simple: cobalt that cannot be traced cannot be used. On the manufacturers’ side, Tesla and BMW among others have published policies on transparency and responsible sourcing. Progress is partial, and companies still admit they cannot trace their supply chains completely [1], but the direction is from invisible sourcing towards visible sourcing. International initiatives and certification schemes for responsible minerals push the same way.

Reducing how much is mined: the answer in recycling

The third route, and the most fundamental, is to mine less. As recycling spreads — recovering metals from used batteries and returning them to new ones — the volume that has to be dug up falls structurally.

Recycling recovers more than 90% of cobalt and nickel, and the more firmly that loop is established, the less the industry depends on troubled new mining. As EVs spread and the stock of batteries builds, the future supply of recoverable material grows with it, so over time the shift runs from digging to circulating. The mining problem shrinks as recycling scales.

For a fair comparison: ask about fossil fuel extraction too

A word on fairness. If extraction is the charge, then it is not fair to weigh only EV batteries and not the fossil fuels a petrol car consumes over its life. Drilling, shipping and refining oil carry environmental damage and geopolitical weight of their own, and human rights abuses and conflict in producing regions have been documented for decades. Fossil fuels are also gone once burned: nothing is recovered, nothing is reused.

An EV battery differs decisively in that the material, once extracted, can be used again and again through reuse and recycling. Extraction is a one-off at the entrance, after which the material can travel in a loop. None of which absolves the mining problem: it is real, and there is a duty to keep working at it. But the view that EVs alone carry the sin of extraction is one-sided, and the comparison should account for the burden on the fossil side and for the structural fact that an EV’s materials can circulate.

In short, the environmental and human rights problems around lithium and cobalt are real and serious and have to be faced. At the same time, three routes — cobalt-free batteries, traceability and responsible sourcing, and less mining through recycling — are steadily making the problem smaller. The ethics of EVs should rest not on pretending there is no problem, but on the work of admitting it and solving it.

Summary

Child labour in cobalt mining (an estimated 25,000 children in the DRC [1]) and water use in lithium extraction are real, serious problems that have to be faced.
Technology: the shift to batteries without cobalt or scarce materials — LFP, sodium-ion — is under way.
Rules: battery passports and due diligence exclude sourcing that cannot be traced.
Materials: recycling structurally reduces dependence on new mining.
Fossil fuel extraction belongs in the same comparison. The decisive difference is that an EV’s materials can circulate.

Not “there is no problem” but “the problem is admitted and being solved” — that is the honest answer on mining.

References and data sources

[1]: Based on reports from the U.S. Department of Labor, Amnesty International and others. CECC. From cobalt to cars: How China exploits child and forced labor in the Congo. https://www.cecc.gov/events/hearings/from-cobalt-to-cars-how-china-exploits-child-and-forced-labor-in-the-congo / UCL Bartlett. (2025). Driving on destruction: How EVs are exploiting Congo’s mines. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/news/2025/jul/blog-driving-destruction-how-evs-are-exploiting-congos-mines (the DRC holds about 80% of world cobalt, an estimated 25,000 children working, and the difficulty of tracing supply chains)