Avoid Inconsistent State-based Regulations for Batteries

There is now widespread recognition that urgent action is required to regulate end-of-life batteries.

When they met in December 2024, Environment Ministers recognised the need for urgent reforms to address the escalating risks of battery fires and to create a sustainable, circular economy for batteries. This reflects calls from the waste and recycling industry and environment groups to mandate producer responsibility battery collection and recycling.

The Battery Stewardship Council runs a voluntary stewardship program for handheld batteries. The Council is advocating regulations that they believe are ‘essential’ to address the challenges of free riders, escalating costs, changing technologies, and the escalating number of fires.

Peak industry and environment groups are also calling on governments to urgently establish a new mandatory product stewardship scheme for all batteries, including those embedded in consumer electronics. It has been estimated that up to 10,000 fires a year are caused by batteries. Another driver is that fact that valuable resources such as nickel, cobalt, lithium, graphite and manganese are currently ending up in landfill due to the lack of a national system for battery reuse and recycling.

With no clear commitment from the Federal Government to establish a national scheme the NSW EPA has announced that they plan to introduce legislation for mandatory battery regulation in 2025. The NSW and Victorian governments presented a draft regulatory impact statement (RIS) to Environment Ministers at their December meeting.

While this initiative from the NSW Government is welcome, we now risk repeating the mistakes that were made with the rollout of state and territory container deposit schemes (CDS) for packaging over many decades. South Australia introduced the first CDS in 1977, followed by the Northern Territory (2012), NSW (2017), ACT and Queensland (2018), WA (2020), Victoria (2023) and finally Tasmania (2024).

This means that we now have 8 different schemes for containers that are sold in a national market, generating higher costs and inefficiencies for both producers and government regulators. It took almost 50 years to achieve and involved enormous administrative costs on all sides.

These problems could have been avoided if packaging producers had collaborated with regulators to design one efficient, national scheme at any time since the first scheme was launched in the 1970s.

Let’s learn from past mistakes. National regulations are urgently required to underpin industry-led schemes like B-Cycle and to build a sustainable, circular economy for all batteries.

Dr Helen Lewis
Principal
Helen Lewis Research