Recycling of batteries

To recycle batteries they must be sorted beforehand to ensure, that they are separated into the different chemistries with a subsequent recycling and recovery of the metals and other recoverable materials.

Battery Industry has developed in the mid 90s a sorting technology to enable automatic and cost efficient sorting. Several automatic and semi-automatic sorting facilities are now operating in Europe.

To enable automatic sorting technology primary batteries (Alkaline and Zinc Carbon round cells) are coded with an invisible UV colour since 1997. This daily investment into the environmental performance of batteries is the basis for the best sorting and recycling.

Alkaline and Zinc-Carbon Batteries	are reycled in metals industry and to recover steel, zinc, ferromanganese etc
NiCd/NiMH batteries	are recycled to recover the Cadmium and Nickel, with positive market value
Li-Ion batteries	are recycled to recover Cobalt with a positive market value
Lead-Acid Batteries	are recycled in Lead industry with positive market value
Button Cells	Silveroxide buttons have a positive market value due to silver containing button cells (Alakline, Zinc-Air) are recycled to recover the mercury

Approximately 70% of the batteries collected are recycled today in an existing recycling market in Europe. This rate will increase over the next years.

The great challenge in Europe is to enable the competition of the recycling industry within the EU internal market for the benefit of the consumers. Still some Member States or local governments try to protect their recycling market by creating technical barriers on the recycling of batteries. According to EU legislation and the intention of the European internal market and to the latest EU Court Decision on recycling (Daimler Chrysler Decision Nov. 2001) industry has the freedom to use any recycling facility around Europe on the basis of the EU competition rules.