Addressing the Battery Recycling Crisis in Australia

While NSW is leading the way towards regulating product stewardship for batteries, other states and territories are lagging behind. The market for lithium based batteries across the country is growing rapidly, and improper disposal represents a significant risk to the environment and human health. Industry led voluntary schemes lack the scope, performance levels and transparency needed to sufficiently deal with the magnitude of the problem. Weak or insufficient regulation will continue to detract from the real regulatory action required across the country. Collection rates for loose batteries remain well below that of comparative countries, and there is insufficient reporting on embedded or larger batteries.

Total Environment Centre has developed an urgent plan to confront the waste battery crisis. This plan emphasises the critical need for immediate regulatory intervention to establish a comprehensive, mandatory Product Stewardship Scheme (PSS). This scheme would facilitate the safe collection, recycling, and reuse of all battery types.

Get the highlights and read our fact sheet now.

Understanding the Battery Problem

Over 200,000 tonnes of batteries were sold in Australia in 2021 with more than 180,000 tonnes of batteries estimated to reach end of life. Projections indicate the total weight of batteries reaching end of life will increase to more than 230,000 tonnes by 2030, and exceed 630,000 tonnes by 2050. While lithium-ion batteries made up 4.5% of the total weight of batteries reaching end of life in 2021, it’s estimated that by 2050 this will increase to around 80%.

Read the full report now.

Update on the battery crisis - voluntary scheme failing.

Hazardous waste

Batteries contain hazardous materials which are highly damaging to human health and the environment. Lithium-ion batteries in particular represent a significant explosion and fire risk. Worryingly, only 3% were collected for recycling in 2021.

Mining and refinement of raw materials to meet Australia’s increasing demand for batteries has significant environmental impacts on carbon emissions, eutrophication, freshwater eco-toxicity, photochemical oxidation, ozone depletion, particulate matter formation, and water scarcity. Although the impacts of production can be significantly reduced through recycling, this is energy-intensive. The environmental impact can be further reduced if second life reuse were undertaken for suitable battery types. TEC has concerns that the current Product Stewardship Schemes do not adequately adhere to the Waste Management Hierarchy, the first step of which promotes avoiding or reducing the use of harmful or wasteful products.

"We need to act now to address the growing fire risks and waste of recyclable resources," says TEC Campaigner, Mark Zihrul. ''Our urgent call to action underscores the need for immediate regulatory intervention to establish a comprehensive, mandatory Product Stewardship Scheme for the safe collection, recycling, and reuse of all battery types in Australia.''

Inefficient Battery Disposal Schemes

The current voluntary industry-led schemes, like Mobilemuster and B-cycle, have dismally low collection rates (~10-15%), highlighting the inadequacy of current efforts to address the environmental risks associated with battery disposal. There are no schemes that currently cover embedded batteries in personal products, such as vapes, drones, or personal mobility scooters, or larger Li-ion batteries such as home battery energy storage systems or electric vehicle batteries.  

Australia has fallen behind progressive countries tackling this problem. TEC believes it is to establish a single independent, accountable administrator to oversee an effective PSS that embodies the circular economy and is capable of ensuring these valuable resources are safely recycled. 

Action Delayed too Long

The development of national Product Stewardship Schemes for battery recycling in Australia has been delayed since handheld batteries were first prioritised by the Minister for Environment in 2013. Significant market segments are still unaddressed nearly a decade later. The Battery Stewardship Council was established in 2018, leading to the B-cycle scheme's launch in January 2022 and subsequently batteries were removed from the 2020/2021 priority list. This was based on the anticipation of the scheme's launch, without evidence of its effectiveness or comprehensive coverage. 

Voluntary schemes like MobileMuster, with consistent low collection rates of 7.5 to 12%, demonstrate the limitations of non-regulatory efforts to achieve higher recycling standards. The current schemes are not capable of requiring all importers and producers to meet higher standards of battery production; provide funds; use greater proportions of easily recycled and renewable material; or reduce the use of hazardous materials. Only a fully regulated response can achieve those outcomes, and swift determined action from the federal government is required to make that a reality.

Read more about the issue in our full report and the fact sheet.

Total Environment Centre's Recommendations

Governments say they recognise circular economy principles as crucial for solving the waste and recycling crisis. The current voluntary schemes are inadequate. We should not wait till they fail.

The following recommendations promote adherence to the Waste Management Hierarchy, and encourage effective product stewardship in line with the measures identified by the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence.

1. Implement a national ban on batteries to landfill: This approach is already in effect in Victoria and proposed in Queensland.
   
   
2. Establish mandatory product stewardship for all batteries with targets for redesign, collection, resource recovery and minimum recycled content for new batteries: This would unify the management of all battery types, eliminating distinctions based on their characteristics, and ensure a sufficient levy pool to fund the scheme, which should be managed by a single administrator, separate from network operators, to prevent conflicts of interest.
   
   
3. Mandate meaningful targets: The Federal Government should set ambitious collection and recycling targets, similar to EU standards, including collection targets, specific resource recovery rates, minimum recycled content requirements for new batteries, and quantifiable achievements to reduce waste, and the promotion of the use of recovered materials.
   
   
4. Delegate limited authority to the administrator
   
   
5. Consumer incentives with access to safe collection networks: Conduct a nationwide gap analyses to ensure access to safe recycling points for all Australians. 
   
   
6. Empower and support recyclers with fair pay
   
   
7. Educating the community and promoting use of recovery materials in new and existing markets

Our efforts to curb the Battery Recycling Crisis in Australia

Total Environment Centre has been campaigning for extended producer responsibility to cover e-waste and electronic goods, including batteries, for more than 20 years. In late 2023 we re-focused our activities on the emerging battery crises. Our campaign has predominantly involved direct communication with government and industry bodies, particularly those in the waste and recycling sector. We have made attempts to ground truth assertions made by voluntary industry schemes to test the veracity of their claims, and have published reports highlighting scheme failures. We continue to engage directly with state government departments to push appropriate and effective regulation. Notable highlights to date include: 

• February 2025 - additional comments to the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water in relation to the Review of the Recycling and Waste Reduction Act.
• October 2024 - Submissions to the federal Productivity Commission on Opportunities in the Circular Economy.
• September 2024 - Undertook an in person spot checks on retailers to observe any obvious barriers limiting success of the voluntary scheme. Less than half of the B-cycle participating retailers had battery recycling bins at all locations surveyed, and those that did have bins, often had not placed them in readily identifiable locations. Overall there was a deficiency in the promotion of in-store recycling. No stores displayed B-cycle’s Safety Campaign material to warn of the risks of incorrect disposal. We observed inconsistent messaging across various brand packaging and the batteries themselves. Nine non-B-cycle brands included the EU WER symbol on all li-ion battery packs observed, whereas no B-cycle brands in this sample met that measure consistently across the packaging observed.  Only 34% of the battery brands we observed in-store were participants of the b-cycle scheme. We subsequently conducted an online review of AAA batteries available on the Australian market. 155 brands of that battery type were identified, only 12% of which were B-cycle participants. Of the 33 e-bike retailers that responded to our survey, only four indicated they would accept e-bike batteries for recycling without restriction or additional fee - highlighting a deficiency in easily accessible recycling options for consumers. The resulting report is available here.
• May 2024 - As state based government agencies use a significant number of domestic, commercial and specialised batteries, that did not appear to be collected through the voluntary scheme, we undertook a review of the state policies guiding these organisations. Subsequent submissions to NSW Standing Committee on Social Issues inquiry into Procurement Practices of Government Agencies (available here) highlighted several gaps in which certain state based government organisations were not covered by policies directives aimed at reducing waste. While certain government agencies were encouraged to engage with stewardship programs, it was not a requirement, nor were there any reporting obligations covering waste directed to stewardship schemes, or to justify alternative waste disposal. State based , and small policy shifts may have capacity to increase battery collection rates.
• April 2024 - submissions to the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water in relation to the Inquiry into Waste and Recycling Policies (available here), and submissions to the Federal House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water Inquiry into the Transition to Electric Vehicles. We highlighted the egregious error made by the federal Minister in 2021, when EV batteries were removed from the Ministers Priority list for action, on the erroneous assumption they were to soon be covered by the Industry led voluntary scheme, B-cycle.
• February 2024 - launched our first report into the Battery Crisis
• July 2023 - feedback to the federal government in relation to the proposed regulated stewardship scheme over Regulation for small electrical products and solar photovoltaic system waste: Available here.
• 2003 - Total Environment Centre’s Green Capital Forum on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), and subsequent engagement with NSW governmental departments on the implementation of the first EPR framework in Australia, as acknowledged in the NSW State department of Environment and Conservation (2004) Report on the Extended Producer Responsibility Preliminary Consultation Program: available here.