Britannia Zinc, the only plant in the UK to recycle domestic batteries, has told its trade unions it wants to close the zinc smelter in Avonmouth near Bristol. The company is a crucial partner in Bristol's Battery Recycling Campaign, a year-long pilot scheme to collect and recycle household batteries which was launched in September 2002.
The initiative was funded by 20,000 from the Department of Trade and Industry, 30,000 from the South West Regional Development Agency, 60,000 from SITA Environmental Trust landfill tax credits and 5,000 from Bristol City Council. The campaign organisers are now in discussions with other metals recyclers about taking over the project, but Britannia Zinc has pledged not to leave the scheme out of pocket.
A spokeswoman for the campaign insisted that despite confusion, the pilot would run its full course, even if reprocessing had to move abroad. “It's very difficult to know what's going to happen, but as long as Britannia Zinc is there, they're going to carry on recycling our batteries,” she said. “The best case scenario for us is that they find a buyer or we find a similar company in the UK. The worst case scenario is that we send the batteries off to Europe.”
Good response
Under the scheme, zinc, cadmium and lead are recovered and used to make new batteries. There has been a good response so far from householders, with 2.78 tonnes collected in three months, of a target 10 tonnes for the whole year. The black-box collections cover all 160,000 households with BS1-BS16 postcodes in the central Bristol area.
It had been hoped that the project would lead the way for consumer battery recovery internationally. Enquiries about the technicalities of the process have been made from France, Japan and Australia as well as other councils, businesses, the police, hospitals and prisons.
Britannia Zinc has entered a 90 day consultation with its trade union and a decision on the future of the plant could come in March 2003. The company is owned by MIM Holdings Ltd, an Australian-based mining and mineral processing company, which sees the Avonmouth plant as a non-core business.
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