Ah yes, Iron and air batteries stealing all our resources. Only 5 percent of the earth's crust is iron making it our 4th most abundant resource. We'll run out of iron in the next few billion of years better watch out!

Personally I'd be more worried about agriculture than battery tech, battery tech has gotten much more affordable and much more efficient with non precious metals. I've seen sodium-ion batteries as well which sodium is our 6th most abundant resource.

So far I've only heard of lithium creating toxic soil but if you can link proof of other battery technology creating toxic soil please inform me. Anyway I think our battery technology hopefully should get good enough to move away from lithium in consumer products. We are already seeing promising breakthroughs with battery technology in the last decade using abundant resources instead.