Government to seek views on battery recycling

The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has until September 2008 to get legislation in place to make battery producers pay for the collection and recycling of spent batteries.

BERR's sustainable development director Tony Pedrotti revealed yesterday at the Waste and Recycling – What Next? conference in London that his Department will seek public views on proposals within two weeks.

Mr Pedrotti said: “We will be issuing a consultation document before Christmas which will show how we think we can implement the Battery Directive in the UK. We have been doing informal consultations through the year and the formal consultation starts in about two weeks' time.”

A further consultation on draft regulations will then be issued in 2008.

Collection

With only around 1% of household batteries being collected for recycling at the moment, Mr Pedrotti identified collection as the biggest challenge ahead, with the UK tasked to collect 25% of portable batteries by 2012 by the Directive.

“It's a huge challenge for the collection side,” he said. “We think the recycling infrastructure could cope, but we think the real challenge will be the collection, and engaging with consumers to achieve behavioural change.”

At the event organised by letsrecycle.com and the Associate Parliamentary Sustainable Waste Group, Mr Pedrotti said the government was keen to make use of the existing collection network for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) established this year, where possible.

The formal consultation later this month will follow informal talks with stakeholder groups held this year, after initial proposals for the battery regulations were published in May (see letsrecycle.com story).

Suggestions so far have included recycling targets being phased in from 2009, and that producers should be obliged to fund a nationwide campaign to promote battery recycling for householders. A special “franchise” body has been proposed to collect information on compliance.

Market

Also speaking at the event yesterday, Duncan Simpson from the producer responsibility company Valpak said he expected the battery regulations to require the collection of 600 million household batteries – in weight terms between 25,000 and 30,000 tonnes of material each year.

He said the overall market for household batteries in the UK was worth about £800-900 million, with four leading companies accounting for about 75% of all sales.

Estimating collection costs as between £85 to £105 per tonne and sorting costs at as much as £600 per tonne, Mr Simpson suggested that to reach the 25% target for household batteries would cost producers in the region of £4.5 million to £5 million a year.

The Valpak marketing director said producers should be credited towards their legal obligations if they set up any collection systems themselves, and warned that the “nightmare” in the system would likely be getting the data correct.