Tesco, Sainsbury’s Partner with Battery Recyclers

Retailers are partnering with recyclers in preparation for Europe’s Battery Directive, set to go into effect next year. As part of the new battery recycling regulation, producers will have to join a Battery Compliance Scheme to meet their responsibilities under the new law, while certain retailers of consumer batteries such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s are required to have systems in place to collect used batteries in-store by February 2010.

Tesco plans to roll-out battery collection points across all its stores in advance of the national battery recycling campaign in Britain that starts next February, reports Environmental Expert.

Tesco has a national contract with BatteryBack, a subsidiary of WasteCare, which has more than 4,500 free collection points across Britain, reports Environmental Expert. The firm has just announced a recent partnership with waste service provider PHS that will expand the recycler’s potential collection network to more than 200,000 sites throughout Britain, according to the Web site.

At the same time, Energizer, one of UK’s largest battery producers has joined Valpak’s battery producer compliance scheme, reports Environmental Expert. Under the battery regulations, all battery producers who put more than one ton of batteries per year onto the market will have to register with an approved compliance scheme, reports Environmental Expert.

Touted as the first UK superstore with a combined recycling scheme, Sainsbury’s and specialist light bulb recycling company Recolight have teamed up to collect end-of-life energy-saving light bulbs and batteries at Sainsbury’s stores, reports ClickGreen.

Sainsbury’s has become the first UK retailer to offer a joint collection of light bulbs and batteries from consumers, reports ClickGreen.  Sainsbury’s expects to roll-out the program to up to 200 of its larger stores by the end of January 2010, according to the article.

Consumers can currently recycle end-of-life energy-saving light bulbs at any of the country’s 1,100 civic amenity sites, however, this partnership is an important step in providing consumers with a wider range of options to make recycling CFLs as easy as possible, which should increase the number of consumer lamps recycled, according to Recolight, reports ClickGreen.

All light bulbs and batteries collected, at specially designed collection containers, will be sent for recycling at approved treatment facilities, according to ClickGreen. One facility used by Recolight sends the cleaned waste glass from light bulbs to a European manufacturer for re-use into new lamp production.

The new Battery Directive is also driving demand for special packaging to transport and store spent batteries. Manufacturers are required to take the batteries to an approved battery treatment center or exporter for treatment and recycling, reports Materials Handling World.

As an example, Dolav, a plastic pallet box specialist, has seen an increase in inquiries for its products ahead of the launch of the new regulations on automotive battery disposal.

According to Dolav, finding the right containers to transport and store batteries will play an important role in meeting the new regulations, reports Materials Handling World.

European Metal Recycling Ltd. (EMR), a global leader in metal recycling, for example, uses Dolav pallet boxes to handle and store more than 500,000 scrap vehicle batteries in an environmentally safe way. Some of the boxes it uses are resistant to UV radiation, chemical and acid attack.