Can you actually recycle lithium batteries?

You can recycle lithium batteries and it definitely makes sense. The way recycling works is that the batteries get taken apart and valuable materials like lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper are recovered. Then those can be used again for new batteries. That's important because these raw materials are expensive and mining them causes serious damage to the environment. By now the recycling processes are also pretty mature - there are different methods like pyrometallurgical or hydrometallurgical processes that achieve pretty decent recovery rates for materials.

Of course it's not 100% perfect and there are leftover materials, but most of the materials can actually be recycled. So the new center where you are is a good thing - take your batteries there instead of throwing them in the trash. The more batteries that get recycled, the more economical it becomes for the operators too. Plus there are now EU regulations saying a certain percentage of raw materials has to be recovered. So it really is worth taking them there.