“I see it so clearly as an act of resistance against all these negative forces that we’re up against, whether it’s consumerist fast fashion or just this pressure to always be producing and making something new,” Garner said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/style/moth-hole-mending-pratt-institute-brooklyn.html

#sewing #mending #sashiko #reuse #reduce #anticonsumerism

On #reuse technology, I set my husband up about 5 years ago with a #Thinkpad T420s + dock and large monitor as the "office" fixed laptop. A couple of hundred quid to sort out.

5 years with no tech problems!

Checking on ebay, amazingly these sell for under £100, probably because they can't take Windoze11. #Microsoft has a lot to answer for, all those very decent wasted laptops than could be used by kids for basic surfing and writing (but are a bit crap for the latest games).

Microwave technique recovers 87% of batteries' #lithium in 15 minutes

By Michael Franco
July 30, 2024

Excerpt: "Normally a compound needs to be heated in order to force metals to precipitate out and in the case of lithium-containing compounds, an oil bath usually provides that heat source. But the process takes a fair bit of time during which the lithium compounds can begin to degrade.

"To speed things up, the Rice team decided to give microwaves a try, knowing that the choline chloride that leads to the isolation of the lithium is very good at absorbing microwave radiation.

"The speed boost was impressive. The researchers were able to precipitate out the lithium almost 100 times faster than an oil bath. In fact, it took them just 15 minutes to get back 87% of the lithium – a process that would take 12 hours using an oil bath.

" 'This allowed us to leach lithium selectively over other metals,' said Sohini Bhattacharyya, one of the other lead authors and a postdoctoral fellow in the Nanomaterials Laboratory. 'Using microwave radiation for this process is akin to how a kitchen microwave heats food quickly. The energy is transferred directly to the molecules, making the reaction occur much faster than conventional heating methods.'

"The researchers say the method can also be tailored to target other elements by tuning the DES composition, so it could have the ability to recover other metals like cobalt or nickel from batteries. The team also highlights the eco-friendly benefits of its approach.

" 'This method not only enhances the recovery rate but also minimizes environmental impact, which makes it a promising step toward deploying DES-based recycling systems at scale for selective metal recovery,' said Pulickel Ajayan, the corresponding author on the study and department chair of materials science and nanoengineering."

Read more:
https://newatlas.com/energy/microwave-lithium-recycling/

#SolarPunkSunday #LithiumRecycling #NoLithiumMining #Recycling #Reuse

#BurlingtonVT startup #NthCycle scores billion-dollar metal #recycling deal

By Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff, March 17, 2026

"Both Nth Cycle and Ascend have developed water-based technologies to extract metals by reprocessing 'black mass,' the ground-up remnants of worn-out #lithiumIon batteries. They can also use the leftover scrap generated by battery manufacturers. Both companies claim that their technologies can capture these metals while generating far less #ToxicWaste than other recycling methods."

Read more:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/17/business/lithium-nickel-cobalt-recycling-us-china/

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/6PoQj

#SolarPunkSunday #MetalRecycling #LithiumRecycling #LionBatteries #BatteryRecycling #NickelRecycling #CobaltRecycling #Recycling #NoMining #Reuse