Work on the new Battery Directive continues

The European Commission continues to work intensively on preparations for the upcoming revision of the Battery Directive. Recently, a round of consultations was held with Member States, asking for their views on specific issues that were raised in the evaluation report compiled by Öko-Institut and Trinomics.

The feedback from Member States should enable the Commission to better understand which rules need to be adapted in order to improve the collection and recycling of waste batteries.

Last week, two full days of stakeholder workshops on the Battery Directive were hosted online by the European Commission. In the workshops, consultants from Öko-Institut presented their proposals, including the results of an impact assessment that they carried out on behalf of the European Commission. Landbell Group company, European Recycling Platform, took part in the workshops.

The main changes proposed by the consultants are:

• to make all batteries that are sold to consumers (including those defined as industrial batteries today) subject to extended producer responsibility obligations with collection targets to be met by producer responsibility organisations (PROs)
• to increase collection targets to 65% within 10 years
• to define minimum spending by PROs for consumer awareness campaigns to increase collections
• to address the removability and interoperability of batteries with specific measures per product category
• to introduce EU-harmonized recycling standards - as well as recycling efficiencies differentiated by battery chemistry - including recovery targets for certain materials, new EU harmonized calculation methods and annual auditing of recyclers.

The Commission also announced that they plan to change the legal status of the measures from a battery directive to a battery regulation since one of the recommendations from earlier evaluation studies was improved harmonization across the EU.

For more information, visit: https://ec.europa.eu