my concern is that we’re just generating more waste and raising costs.

I dont think you should worry about that. Having batteries glued in makes for worse recycling than removable batteries. glued Batteries causes a lot of issues in ewaste recycling and loss of rare metals. Easily removable batteries makes for a higher chance of recycling said batteries and actually lithium batteries are highly recyclable, so much so that raw materials made from recycled batteries is of higher quality than mined materials because they are more pure to begin with.

Properly recycling batteries separately is always better than ewasted batteries.