In a welcome move on Tuesday night,  the Hon. Penny Sharpe, NSW Minister for the Environment introduced the Product Lifecycle Responsibility Bill to the NSW Parliament. This bill will establish a framework to regulate product stewardship over a range of environmentally damaging products. The Minister gave a clear indication batteries would be the first priority for regulation.

’This type of law has been urgently needed as the waste, environmental damage and dangers from products like batteries grows.  Product stewardship involves those in the production and sale of goods, bearing responsibility for mitigating the adverse environmental and health risks arising from their products,’’ said TEC Campaigner, Mark Zihrul . 

Although the Commonwealth government has long recognised product stewardship as being vital for the transition to the circular economy, they have demonstrated an unfortunate preference towards ineffective voluntary schemes, which have failed to achieve sufficient levels of recycling or waste reduction. 

The federal voluntary scheme for batteries has been wrought with problems. That scheme only covers limited battery types; has significant problems with “free riders” who choose not to participate in the scheme; doesn’t track or require design improvements to reduce waste or better facilitate second life or easier dismantling for recycling; doesn’t set recycled content or labeling requirements; doesn’t promote markets for material recovered from recycling; is not sufficiently funded to cover the full cost of recycling annual waste produced; and consistently misses around 85% of the limited batteries types they do target for collection. 

Earlier today, Mark said: "We need product stewardship schemes capable of collecting and recycling every used battery given their hazardous and potentially explosive contents. This legislation sets out the framework to make that possible,”