Recycling Lives Services said it is the first compliance scheme to generate evidence for producer obligations that is specifically geared to the chemistry of the battery.
The company matches evidence to materials placed on the market by battery chemistry, moving away from the use of lead-acid protocols as the generic measure.
The finding comes as it has released the results of its first quarter offering the service which began at the start of 2025.
AJ Marsh, head of compliance schemes for Recycling Lives Services, said: “Batteries are increasingly creating a range of challenges for the recycling industry.
“There were around 1,200 battery fires across the UK’s waste management infrastructure in 2023, predominantly caused by lithium-ion batteries common in portable consumer electronics. While these batteries are being collected, the option to use lead-acid protocols to evidence collections of lithium-ion and other battery types means they are being stored, rather than treated and moved on for recycling.
“We’ve made the move away from protocols, instead. We’ve implemented new processes for collecting producer data, setting collection targets, and generating evidence. This is not only improving recycling rates and reducing risk but creating cost savings too.
“Because treatment rates for batteries can differ greatly by chemistry type, in some instances our producers are seeing savings of 50%.”
Recycling Lives Services worked with businesses such as Hisense, Midea and Oregon Tools.
For one producer, which only placed alkaline batteries on the market, Recycling Lives Services sourced 100% alkaline batteries from local authority collections to generate evidence, cutting the producer’s treatment rates by half.
The approach comes ahead of the planned changes to the UK’s Batteries & Accumulators Regulations, expected to come in in 2026/27.
The current battery regulations require that 45% of batteries placed on the UK market are collected and recycled annually. However, they allow for any type of portable battery to be used to fulfil this target.
Marsh added: “This tends to mean that lead-acid protocols are overused. We know this because there’s real disparity between the battery types placed on the market compared to the types being cited to fulfil targets.
“Where high volumes of certain battery types are stored, fire risk is increased and valuable materials are prevented from being recycled and kept in circulation.”
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