B-cycle, the voluntary industry group managing Australia’s battery recycling, is looking more and more like greenwash for the battery industry. 
This morning's report in the Sydney Morning Herald that batteries collected for recycling are instead being stockpiled, burnt or buried by B-cycle’s main recycler, Ecocycle, highlights the urgent need for a fully regulated and transparent national battery recycling scheme reinforced by strong compliance and penalties.

“The SMH report adds to our own findings of widespread failures to advertise in-store recycling, inconvenient collection points and not utilising battery safety material for consumers. Of the batteries that are in scope for the scheme, less than 20% are collected for recycling, so most are landfilled anyway. It’s a triple failure and should be the final nail in the coffin for B-cycle,” said Mark Zihrul, Campaigner at TEC.

B-cycle paid out more than $15m in rebates to collectors and recyclers in the 2024-2025 financial year. To discover that money was paid without verifying the quantities of batteries recycled, material recovery rates or the end fate of those recovered materials, really calls into question the industry body’s ability to administer such a scheme.

Each year, around 200,000 tonnes of batteries reach end-of-life in Australia. These batteries contain valuable and hazardous materials that need to be safely extracted for reuse. The behaviour revealed today undermines the public's confidence in recycling, and risks disgruntled consumers reverting to dangerous kerbside disposal, which threatens all waste and recycling in Australia with fire outbreaks. We need to fast track the March agreement by Australia’s Environment Ministers to have an inter-governmental agreement implementing regulated stewardship for batteries to ensure transparent, fully-funded and safe battery recycling takes place across Australia.

TEC has long been critical of the voluntary industry-led scheme and the failure of the federal government to set meaningful public targets when the scheme was initially accredited (see our February 2024 report). Our October 2024 report highlighted widespread failures to advertise in-store recycling or utilise battery safety campaign material.