All sorts of electronics - cell phones, laptops, digital cameras, etc. - are ever-present in today’s society. Nowadays, these electronics are powered from Lithium-ion batteries. The major processes throughout the lithium life cycle can be divided into five stages: resource mining, chemical production, product manufacture, product use and waste management (Sun et al., 2017). Lithium is extracted from two sources - ore and salt brines - and the lithium minerals are then transformed into basic chemicals such as lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, and lithium chloride to produce many derivatives (Sun et al., 2017, p. 51-52; Wanger, 2010; USGS, 2018). Originally, the majority of lithium was produced from mineral ore sources - spodumene, lepidolite
