Battery regulations in the United Kingdom

In a similar vein to packaging, electronic equipment and vehicles, the concept of extended producer responsibility was applied to Batteries in the UK through the transposition of the EU Battery Directive into UK legislation. The Directive required member states to have put regulations in place by 26 September 2008. Although the UK managed to introduce the single market requirements by that date, they failed to implement the collection and recycling requirements. Following a recent consultation, the government laid the new Regulations before Parliament on 16 April which will come into force on 5 May 2009. Responsibility for the financing of waste battery collection and treatment will be applied to producers from 1 January 2010 whilst retailers will have to offer free take back of portable batteries to consumers from 1 February 2010. The new Regulations have included some significant changes from the consultation. Only those that place more than one tonne per year onto the market will now have to register through Compliance Schemes and be required to finance collection etc. Those below a tonne will now have to register with one of the environmental Agencies for an annual fee of £30 creating a huge disparity between the two classes of producer as the larger ones are likely to have costs that will run into several thousands of pounds. The threshold for retail involvement has also changed, removing a 280m2 minimum floor space requirement but upping the total weight of batteries sold from 16 kg to 32 kg. This means that any retail premises selling more than approximately 24 AA batteries a week will be required to offer in-store take back. The requirements also apply to industrial and automotive batteries, but given the current value of those and their hazardous nature, there is little change to the current commercial processes that already see them all recovered anyway. The Directive requires member states to be collecting 25% of portable batteries by the end of 2012. The UK is believed to be collecting around 4%, so this is not without its challenges. Whether the system being proposed will achieve that remains to be seen, but an increase of these proportions has taken several years longer in other EU countries such as the Netherlands.

In summary, for portable batteries, the regulations require the following:

See also

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