Material recycling has not to date been particularly effectively developed. The most-recycled metal in the United States is lead, and only about 40% of it is recovered. That means that the useful amount in use decreases by over half with each use generation.

Even with high recovery rates, per-generation losses mean that new mining or other recovery is constantly required. And the amounts of lithium required for widespread energy storage are truely vast.

"As of 2017, the recycling of Li-Ion batteries generally does not extract lithium since the many different types of Li-Ion batteries require a different extraction process."

Source: "Battery Recycling > Lithium ion batteries" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_recycling