European Parliament and the Council regulates battery life-cycles

The European Parliament and the Council have adopted a new regulation that affects production, reuse and recycling.

The new rules aim to promote a cricular economy by regulating end-of-life requirements, as well as recovery targets and extended producer responsibility.

Producers have targets to collect 63% waste portable batteries by the end of 2027 and 73% by the end of 2030, and the dedicated collection objective for waste batteries for light transport is 51% by the end of 2028 and 61% by the end of 2031.

Mandatory minimum levels of recycled content for industrial, SLI and EV batteries have been set at 16%, 85%, 6% and 6% for cobalt, lead, lithium and nickel respoectively. Batteries will have to hold a recvycled content documentation.

The recycling efficiency target for nickel-cadmium batteries is set at 80% by the end of 2025 and 50% by the end 2025 for other waste batteries.

'Batteries are key to the decarbonisation process and the EU's shift towards zero-emission modes of transport. At the same time end-of-life batteries contain many valuable resources and we must be able to reuse those critical raw materials instead of relying on third countries for supplies,' says Teresa Ribera, Spanish minister for the ecological transition.