Recycling lithium batteries ?

[Externet]

How energy and cost demanding is the process to recycle spent or failed lithium batteries to recover lithium into manufacturing new batteries ?

From years of experience, only about 25% of lithium batteries get spent;  most have a single cell failure that forces discarding the whole relatively good package.   Is a non-spent cell from such pack yielding better/more/easier recycled lithium than a truly spent one ?

What compounds are not recoverable into lithium in a spent battery ?  Does a failed cell contain 'better' lithium than a 'spent' one ? What about when recycling new unused/obsolete cells ?

[Sensei]

The basic question is what is easier/profitable: mining lithium or processing existing used lithium batteries.