New EU regulations for battery disposal

Rules that require battery retailers to provide disposal facilities come into force this month to divert heavy metals from landfill
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 January 2010 16.26 GMT
New regulations come into force this month that require retailers selling batteries to provide collection and recycling facilities for their eventual disposal.
The rules, part of the EU's batteries directive, are meant to deal with the thousands of tonnes of harmful metals that pollute the environment when used batteries are burned or put into landfill.
According to the Environment Agency, which will be among the organisations to enforce the new rules, the directive will "affect any business that uses, produces, supplies, or disposes of batteries, as well as any business that manufactures or designs battery-powered products".
For consumers, everything from AAA cells to mobile phone batteries and button cells used in hearing aids and watches, must be separated from household rubbish and placed into designated recycling bins in shops or other recycling points. Though the details are yet to be worked out, among the schemes expected to become available to consumers are in-store recycling points, kerbside collection and post-back to manufacturers or vendors.
"The primary intention is to divert batteries away from landfill, to avoid metals such as cadmium and mercury in those batteries from getting into the environment," said Bob Mead, the Environment Agency's project manager. "For portable batteries, the current rate of collection and recycling are pretty low, the government estimates it at around 3%. The directive requires us to get that up to a minimum of 25% by 2012 and 45% by 2016."
Anyone selling more than a tonne of portable batteries a year will have to arrange for the collection, recycling and disposal of waste batteries in proportion to their market share. But Mead said this did not mean retailers would be burdened with layers of extra responsibility. "The retailers themselves are required to do nothing more than provide a point where one of these collection bins can be placed," he said. "They have no responsibilities themselves in treating or recycling the batteries they collect. They merely have to phone up one of the compliance schemes and say: 'I've got some batteries so come and take them away from me.'"
The directive was created to deal with the approximately 800,000 tonnes of automotive batteries, 190,000 tonnes of industrial batteries and 160,000 tonnes of consumer batteries that are placed on the EU market every year. The metals used range from lead and mercury to nickel, cadmium, zinc, lithium and manganese.
According to the European commission, mercury, lead and cadmium are the most problematic substances in the battery waste stream and batteries made with these metals are classified as hazardous waste. When these waste batteries are burned, they contribute to air pollution and, when they end up in landfill, the metals leach into the surrounding land. In additioon, thousands of tonnes of valuable metals, such as nickel, cobalt and silver, could be recovered if batteries did not go to landfills or incinerators.