Optimism comes from scientific first principles, economic fundamentals, and an awareness that THE #1 most fully recycled mass-produced product on the planet are vehicular lead acid batteries. Approximately 90% of batteries sold end up in the hands of recyclers, who are able to recycle 99% of their contents.
Once there's a strong pipeline of electric cars headed for wreckers, the scale is there for recycling to be significantly more profitable than mining raw materials. The scale isn't there right now because most battery packs pulled from vehicles (wrecks, end-of-life, etc) are still highly valuable intact.
Companies like Redwood Materials are scaling up in preparation for this future.
(Non-vehicle lithium batteries are likely too small, too fiddily, too difficult to build a supply chain for that recycling to be economical on their own. But once the pipeline is there, adding all the small batteries to it would be a no-brainer.)
Strong words, but you didn’t cite any sources. What are the “scientific first principles” that support your claim? Lead acid batteries are entirely different materials and chemistry, e.g. lead retains its quality through secondary smelting.[1]
Why do I need cite sources? I'm not here to teach you basic chemistry. It is neither remarkable nor controversial that that nearly all of the materials within a lithium ion battery are very highly recyclable—infinitely recyclable with respect to metals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper. Redwood Materials are already recycling 20,000 tonnes per year, including production scrap from the Panasonic-Tesla factory in Nevada, with recovery rates currently between 95 and 98 percent.
The only missing piece to achieving scale is a pipeline of recyclable material; this will obviously exist once electric cars begin to age out in sufficient quantity.
