Agency bids to remove battery scheme approval

The Environment Agency is facing a legal challenge over its decision to withdraw the approval of one of the UKs six batteries compliance schemes.

Minutes from a meeting of the Agencies and Industry Batteries Operational Liaison Group (AIBOLG) held last month reveal that the Agency accepted that five schemes had met their 2010 obligations for collecting waste portable batteries on their producer members behalf.

However, one unspecified scheme declared that it had not met its obligation, and, as a result, the Agency has served a notice to remove this schemes approval. The minutes state: As the scheme could not evidence sufficient collection of waste portable batteries, we are taking enforcement action, which has resulted in us serving a notice to remove scheme approval.

The minutes reveal that an appeal against this decision has been lodged by the unnamed scheme with Defra, the department responsible for over-seeing the portable batteries aspect of the UK batteries regulations.

And, as a result, the Agencies explain we are not in a position to publish the final 2010 data until we understand the outcome of this appeal. The Agency also declined to give further details about the scheme from which it was seeking to withdraw approval.

2010 data

Battery recycling figures for 2010 the first year of the UK battery recycling system were originally published by the Agencies in March 2011 (see letsrecycle.com story). They showed the UK narrowly missed the 10% non-statutory collection target which was set as a means of gauging its progress towards the first legally-binding collection target set under the EU Batteries Directive. This requires 25% of waste portable batteries to be collected for recycling by 2025.

However, the 2010 collection figures did not include the tonnages of batteries collected by the CCR REBAT scheme. With the figures from CCR REBAT, the UKs overall performance could have seen it moving above the 10% target.

In August 2011, CCR REBAT admitted to differences between its and the Agencys interpretation of some aspects of the battery regulations, but claimed these differences had been resolved and that a formal procedure involving the Agency was set to be resolved shortly (see letsrecycle.com story).

letsrecycle.com was unable to contact CCR REBAT today for an update on the 2010 data. The scheme has 47 producer members, ranging from telecommunications giant BT to supermarket Lidl, at time of publication.

Regulations

The AIBOLG minutes outline the situation should the scheme in questions appeal be lost, pointing to provisions in the batteries regulations which could mean either a new scheme is established or the producers sign up to the other existing schemes.

Under the battery regulations, if a schemes approval is withdrawn, its members have 42 days to join a new scheme. Alternatively, there is the potential for a new scheme to be established, with interested parties given 28 days from formal notification of schemes non-approval to submit an application.

In terms of the batteries and evidence collection by any scheme whose approval is withdrawn, the minutes again point to provisions in the regulations which seek to address this.

Again, it was explained that there were provisions in the regulations for this in that the evidence collected by the scheme would be split proportionally between each of its members for [sic] in order to put towards either meeting their own obligation or to take to their new scheme, they state.