Retail surgery: What to expect from battery recycling law

The law will come into force on February 1, 2010. It affects any retailers that import more than 1 ton of batteries a year – whether the batteries are inside products or imported and sold separately. These retailers will have to register with a battery compliance scheme by October 15.

Each producer will pay an amount – according to their market share – of the collection and recycling costs. They will also have to declare their sales of batteries each year according to chemistry type (nickel, cadmium and so on), which will affect how much they have to pay.

The legislation also applies to retailers classified as distributors. From February 1, they must take back portable batteries and inform shoppers about the recycling system at the point of sale.

Gareth Roberts, managing director of compliance company Comply Direct, says the targets are ambitious. Only around 2 cent of UK portable batteries are collected at present, but under the new legislation producers will be responsible for collecting and recycling at least 25 per cent by 2012, rising to 45 per cent by 2016.

There are other challenges too, not least, adds Roberts, unknown costs. Membership fees are unclear, because schemes do not know how many members they will have to spread the other costs between. Other unknown costs include collection and recycling fees, because these are based on market share. There will also be a share of the cost for a scheme’s publicity campaign, which has yet to be defined and approved.

Online distributors face an additional challenge in meeting their take-back obligation without having physical stores.