The government has started holding informal consultations with industry concerning the implementation of the Battery Directive.

The consultations include discussions around a life cycle analysis report that appears to recommend kerbside collection schemes or civic amenity sites for collecting batteries.

The Battery Directive was adopted by Europe last September, and will see battery manufacturers and importers funding collections and recycling for spent batteries (see letsrecycle.com story).

New requirements under the Directive include collection targets of 25% of all spent portable batteries by September 26, 2012 and 45% by September 2016.

The UK is currently collecting as little as 0.5% of household batteries for recycling.

"Brainstorm"
Minister Ben Bradshaw revealed last week that initial meetings with industry have been taking place since the New Year with the DTI and Defra, including a workshop on February 12 "to brainstorm initial ideas about the Directive".

Mr Bradshaw said: "This is a producer responsibility directive and we are discussing the implementation with the businesses likely to be affected."

As well as the collection costs, the Battery Directive sets "efficiency" targets to ensure high proportions of collected batteries are reprocessed into usable materials. These include recycling 65% of lead-acid batteries, 75% of nickel-cadmium batteries and 50% of other batteries collected by September 26, 2010, all targets calculated by weight.

Life Cycle
As well as noting the work being carried out by WRAP – the Waste and Resources Action Programme – to trial different collection options, the minister revealed that government officials are discussing a life cycle analysis report on batteries assembled by consultants ERM.

Mr Bradshaw said: "Both WRAP’s findings and ERM’s Battery Waste Management Life Cycle Assessment report will be discussed with producers and used to assist policy development in this area."

Scenarios
The ERM report looks at three collection scenarios for battery recycling – one using kerbside schemes, one using civic amenity sites and a final scenario where bring banks are set up in public places, schools and offices.

The report also looked at three scenarios for the reprocessing of alkaline and saline batteries – using UK facilities, sending batteries to Europe to be reprocessed and a mixture of the two options.

Although "no clear overall high performer" was identified among the scenarios, the report noted that collections using bring banks in various public places "perform relatively less well" compared to kerbside schemes and civic amenity sites.

This was mainly because of the transport network needed to service new public bring banks.

The research suggested that recycling batteries can generate between 198kg and 248kg of carbon-equivalent emissions savings for every tonne of batteries recycled, compared to current arrangements, assuming a 35% recycling rate.

source news : letsrecycle.com