Chile, April 2023. Albemarle Facility. Albemarle workers collecting samples from a lithium pond. Chilean Lithium is processed through a method that involves the use of big evaporation ponds where the extracted brine water, carried out and pumped from a series of underground wells, is collected and left to evaporate, while exposed to weather elements. The brine, a “complex soup” with a variety of salts, is in fact concentrated in large pools for 12 to 18 months, with an addition of lime and sodium. Since these salts have different solubilities, the final element remaining after more than a year is a 6% concentrated lithium, which is then sent to the chemical plant where lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide are produced. Albemarle is one of the two companies owning a lithium mine in the Salar de Atacama. Located in the southern part of the Salar, it is smaller than SQM’s mine, but still a leading industry in the field. ***GENERAL CAPTION***Chile has the largest lithium reserves in the world. The country is the second global producer of this metal, essential in the upcoming energy switch for its utilization in the production of electric batteries for vehicles, smart devices, renewable power plants, and other technologies helping the world transition away from fossil fuels. According to the Chilean government’s projections, global demand for lithium will quadruple by 2030, reaching 1.8 million tonnes. The Atacama region, which is also home to vast copper mines, supplies nearly one-quarter of the globe’s lithium. The private-owned mining companies SQM and Albemarle take the lead in the commercialization and development of the material, often at the expense of the environment and small communities. The metal is, in fact, extracted through the evaporation of brines found beneath salt flats on South America’s Atacama Plateau, a water-intensive method that drains already scarce water resources, damages wetlands, and harms communities. Miners pump salty