Lithium mining is an issue and can be improved. Lithium on its own ending up in the rivers and sea when it is a valuable commodity? How is that going to happen?
We are enormously expanding our use of lithium, and the biggest problem for the places that are currently trying to recycle lithium batteries is that there aren't enough of them to recycle. A big source of their current batteries are just the defects from the current manufacturing process.
Hopefully by 2030 there will be a robust network of recycling facilities around the world, for the majority of exhausted lithium batteries.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/batteries-storage/lithiumio...