For a waste stream comprised of such dangerous chemicals as lead-acid, nickel-cadmium and mercury, it may appear surprising that battery recycling has taken so long to get off the ground in the UK. But for years, a dearth of reprocessing facilities made the cost of sending batteries to recycling facilities on the Continent prohibitively high, and meant that as late as 2008 only two per cent of Britain’s portable batteries were being recycled.

Things started changing in the wake of the EU’s 2006 Batteries Directive. Targets were put in place – 25 per cent of all portable batteries were to be recycled by 2012, with this figure rising to 45 per cent by 2016 – and the directive enshrined in law the concept of producer responsibility. Meanwhile, WRAP conducted a three-year collection trial that concluded that adding batteries to kerbside collections would be the most effective solution, yielding an average of 7.9 per household compared to 1.7 for retail take back.

And, as with waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE), a compliance system was set up, with five schemes – ERP, Valpak, Repic, Budget Pack and Battery Bank – emerging to collect batteries through a combination of local authority collections, retailer take-back schemes and what could be broadly be described as ‘other’ means (community drop off points, postal take back, etc).

Nick Purser, Communications Manager at ERP, explains how the collection system works for the pan-European compliance scheme in the UK: “We have a network of collection boxes all over the UK. We encourage and promote offices, schools, libraries and a whole range of official premises to request a box. The box comes with three liners, and we ask people to fill up one liner before calling us and they can either call us or go online and we will come and collect the batteries for free.”

The UK system is broadly similar to those on the Continent, though some EU member states like Belgium and Holland have opted for a single national compliance scheme. And thus far, our system seems to have been fairly successful – according to the most recent figures, battery recycling has shot up to 27.7 per cent (according to provisional figures for 2012).

Philip Morton, Chief Executive of Repic, puts that down to the simple fact that targets have meant everyone has had to up their game. “It has made a difference. It is a requirement of being a battery compliance scheme that you have to have a promotional campaign, so we’ve done things like run poster competitions in schools and educational visits. You cannot underestimate consumer awareness. If you say to them, ‘We’d really like you to recycle these things – it won’t cost you to do it, you’re doing your bit for the environment and we’ll make it easy for you’, the vast majority of people want to do it.”

However that’s not to say there haven’t been problems. These largely concern the fact that, of the three main categories, only portable batteries have a target attached to them. There are grounds to believe that many of the lead-acid batteries that have been collected are in fact industrial or automative and thus shouldn’t count towards the recycling figures. “With lead-acid, when you compare what went onto the market in 2012 with what was collected, the collection rate was something over 300 per cent!” says Michael Green, the Managing Director of G&P Batteries. “As the nickel cadmium collection rate was around 12 per cent and the ‘other’ collection rate between 8 and 10 per cent, that figure is just not credible.

“There’s no legislative requirement for each chemistry to achieve that 25 per cent figure, so you’ve got this huge skew towards lead-acid. The reason for that seems to be that the definition of a portable battery the producers are using when they’re putting batteries onto the market is not the same as the definition the waste industry uses when they measure lead-acid batteries coming off the market.”

It’s an issue that the government is not unaware of, with a BIS spokesperson explaining: “We recognise the concerns expressed by some in the industry that the UK could be said to be over-reliant on lead-acid batteries in meeting our national recycling targets. We are, nevertheless, looking into the issue alongside industry as part of a wider call for clearer guidance.”

Other stakeholders are more relaxed about the confusion over figures. “I wouldn’t say that it’s necessarily that vastly skewed”, argues Philip Morton. “Some people are saying that there are some concerns because we’re collecting more waste portable batteries than are being placed on the market. Well, that could be for a whole host of reasons. Look at WEEE – the collection rate for TVs for display is about 200 per cent, and the reason for that is very simple: when you buy a flat panel TV it might weigh 10 kilogrammes but the one that gets thrown away might weigh 80 kilogrammes. Similar things might well be happening
with batteries.”

But unless the confusion over definitions is cleared, it’s doubtful the UK will meet the 45 per cent target in 2016. “That is definitely going to be a stretch”, admits Morton. “I think the battery regulations are working quite well and [we] have undoubtedly learned from some of the teething problems with WEEE, but there needs to be more promotion, looking perhaps at different routes, to catch more batteries.”

Michael Green concurs. “There’s an awful lot still to be done. A lot of batteries still end up in the general waste stream and going to landfill, mainly because there has been no real need because targets have been met. That is the downside to having a target – it’s only when compliance schemes need more batteries from the public that they will start to promote.

“But,” he adds, “if we can get this lead-acid problem sorted out, then they can start to promote that to the public during the course of this year. If that happens, it means that it will still be possible to achieve all the targets through to 2016.”