Still slop. This article appears to conflate battery recycling with lithium recovery, two distinct steps to achieve high lithium reuse.
>A new law taking effect this year will require manufacturers and importers to collect and recycle small portable batteries from the likes of phones, vapes, and power tools.
But "recycle" doesn't necessarily mean closed-loop recycling (recycling into the same products). Lithium recovery is a type of open-loop recycling and the surrounding paragraphs talk about lithium recovery so this is a reasonable interpretation.