Using urine to recycle electric vehicle batteries sounds… weird. Like something from a late-night science podcast. But this is real—and surprisingly smart.
Researchers from Sweden and India, at Linnaeus University and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, figured out a way to pull valuable metals out of old lithium-ion batteries using nothing more than a mix of vinegar (acetic acid) and human urine.
Their work was published in ACS Omega, and it’s been picked up by Anthropocene, a publication focused on environmental science. What they found could actually help solve one of the growing problems in the world of electric vehicles: what to do with all those old batteries — and how to stop digging up more of the stuff we need to make them.
How does this process even work?
For the researchers, is simple: Every EV battery is packed with metals like cobalt, lithium, and copper—all of which come from mining. Mining is messy, expensive, and terrible for the environment. And once a battery reaches the end of its life, most of it sadly goes to waste.
So, this research team decided to try something simpler. They took old battery material and soaked it in a mix of acetic acid (that’s the main ingredient in vinegar) and urine. That combo turned out to be surprisingly effective: it pulled out 97% of the cobalt, plus a good chunk of lithium and copper too.
And just to answer what your probably thinking about; the scientists did not say where they sourced the urine used for the experiment. But the origin of the product is not the interesting part.
The big deal? This method uses less energy, no toxic chemicals, and ingredients that are—let’s just say—widely available.
It’s not just a clever idea, it’s a scalable one
Plenty of recycling ideas sound good in theory but fall apart when you try to apply them in the real world. This one might actually scale.
The researchers say the process is simple, low-cost, and safe. According to Ian Nicholls, a professor involved in the project, the method “has potential to work for large-scale extraction.” Translation: we could use this in actual recycling centers—not just labs.
That matters, because right now, battery recycling is staying way behind battery production. And as electric vehicles keep growing in popularity, the pressure is on to find better ways to reuse the materials we already have—especially ones that don’t require even more mining.
Are vinegar and urine the future of electric car batteries?
The idea of pee-powered recycling might sound gross at first. But it makes sense for science. Urine naturally contains compounds that help break down battery materials and separate out the good stuff—like cobalt, lithium, and copper. This is already a huge discovery as it is.
And the truth is, we need solutions like this. EVs are a big part of the fight against climate change; the industry is growing more and more every day, pushing greener solutions to help one of Earth’s biggest problems: pollution. And every day there are more people on the electric car lifestyle side.
But they’re not perfect. It’s a growing industry but still an early-developing one. The way we source materials for their batteries—and what we do with those batteries after—needs a serious rethink.
This is one of those unexpected ideas that might actually work. It’s cheap. It’s clean. And it turns literal waste into something incredibly useful.
Maybe it’s weird, but the potential behind the discovery is huge. If a mix of vinegar and urine can help make EVs more sustainable? Sounds more like a genius idea than anything gross.