Recycling Lives Services is the first compliance scheme generating like-for-like evidence for producer obligations
The UK’s first battery compliance scheme to provide ‘chemistry-specific’ evidence for producers has shared results from its first quarter.
Recycling Lives Services is the first to adopt a chemistry-specific approach to evidencing producer obligations for batteries. It matches evidence to materials placed on the market by battery chemistry, moving away from the use of lead-acid protocols.
Now the business has shared how matching obligations by 100% in the first quarter of 2025 created treatment cost savings of 50% for some producers.
Creating cost savings
Working with businesses including Hisense, Midea and Oregon Tools, the compliance scheme delivers chemistry specific evidence at no extra cost to clients. And its bosses have said their first quarter results demonstrate that in many cases, the new approach delivers significant cost savings.
For one producer, which only placed alkaline batteries on the market, Recycling Lives Services sourced 100% alkaline batteries from local authority collections to generate evidence, cutting the producer’s treatment rates by half.
AJ Marsh, Head of Compliance Schemes for Recycling Lives Services, said:
“Batteries are increasingly creating a range of challenges for the recycling industry.
“There were around 1,200 battery fires across the UK’s waste management infrastructure in 2023, predominantly caused by lithium-ion batteries common in portable consumer electronics. While these batteries are being collected, the option to use lead-acid protocols to evidence collections of lithium-ion and other battery types means they are being stored, rather than treated and moved on for recycling.
“We’ve made the move away from protocols, instead. We’ve implemented new processes for collecting producer data, setting collection targets, and generating evidence. This is not only improving recycling rates and reducing risk but creating cost savings too.
“Because treatment rates for batteries can differ greatly by chemistry type, in some instances our producers are seeing savings of 50%.”
The business says it wants to lead the charge on improving safety, maximising material recovery, and encouraging innovation in the sector. Its approach is a step ahead of planned changes to the UK’s Batteries & Accumulators Regulations, expected to come in in 2026/27.
The current battery regulations require that 45% of batteries placed on the UK market are collected and recycled annually. However, they allow for any type of portable battery to be used to fulfil this target.
Mr Marsh – who sits on industry and government working groups in the UK and Europe – explained:
“This tends to mean that lead-acid protocols are overused. We know this because there’s real disparity between the battery types placed on the market compared to the types being cited to fulfil targets. Where high volumes of certain battery types are stored, fire risk is increased and valuable materials are prevented from being recycled and kept in circulation.”
Working in partnership
Working with a collection network across the UK, including HWRCs, AATFs, and other operators, Recycling Lives Services now sources chemistry-specific batteries evidence to match the battery types placed on the market by its producers.
Recycling Lives Services’ site operations process and treat batteries at one of its facilities – a registered ABTO in Workington, Cumbria. This site is home to new kit worth more than £100,000, which sorts and separates batteries by chemistry type. A 25-strong team at the facility also complete manual sorting, to ensure segregation of materials.
Creating social value
The Workington site also contributes to the business’s sector-leading offender rehabilitation programme. This offers ‘day release’ work placements to prisoners from nearby HMP Haverigg, under release on temporary license (ROTL) conditions, and also has a number of ex-offenders employed full-time at the site.
ROTL jobs are proven to reduce reoffending rates, helping ex-offenders to resettle in the community, gain skills, and earn a good wage ahead of release. Around 15% of Recycling Lives Services’ team first joined the business on a ROTL placement, staying on with the employer after release. The business helps to deliver reduced reoffending rates of just 5% amongst the men and women it supports.