Recycling in the case of a battery means shredding it, and reducing it into a so-called "black mass", a powder rich in cobalt and nickel. What I've seen is a lot of premature recycling, where batteries with about 70-80% of their state of health remaining get recycled, instead of reused. A promising way around this, is to re-use them in grid storage applications eg. coupled to a wind/solar farm. There, the cycling of battery charge is much less demanding than in a car. (shamelessly, we're starting a company to tackle just that issue, if anyone interested, message me)