Regulatory failure mars battery recycling in Australia 

Fresh scrutiny of recovery rates under the auspices of the voluntary battery recycling scheme, B-cycle, reignites long held concerns over the scheme’s viability, efficacy and transparency. 

The Sydney Morning Herald recently reported claims from former employees at B-cycle’s main recycler, Ecocycle, that batteries were routinely taken to landfill or processed in sub-optimal conditions by Ecocycle’s sister company Recycal, without knowledge of the stewardship scheme. This testamony is supported in part by GPS tracking data and photographs. Of particular concern, the SMH revealed B-cycle does not have sufficient data to verify recycling outcomes for batteries collected through their scheme. 

How did we get here? 

Product stewardship has long been recognised as a vital mechanism to achieve a more circular economy and ensure those responsible for environmental harm and wasteful outcomes, pay their fair share towards the costs to mitigate or remediate those harms in line with the Polluter Pays principle.  Under the Product Stewardship Act 2011, the Environment Minister is required to nominate particularly hazardous products for attention on a yearly “priority list”, the intention being that if an industry didn’t make sufficient progress to self regulate and reduce the negative environmental impacts of their products, the federal government would then step in to establish a regulated stewardship scheme. 

Handheld batteries were first listed on the Minister’s Priority list in 2013¹ and in 2016 expanded to include all battery types.² To maintain control and avoid potentially expensive regulations being imposed, members of the battery industry formed the Battery Stewardship Council in 2019. That entity now operates the voluntary recycling scheme B-cycle. The B-cycle scheme is a federally accredited scheme under the Recycling and Waste Reduction Act 2020, meaning it has some minor reporting requirements in exchange for permission to use Commonwealth owned product stewardship logos. B-cycle is also authorised by the ACCC to engage in behaviour that might otherwise constitute cartel behaviour under the Competition and Consumer Act (2010).³ 

TEC has consistently warned about such weak arrangements.

B-cycle’s underlying issues 

B-cycle has been marred with problems since its inception. This is not just a failure of the battery industry, but a failure of both state and federal governments to take decisive regulatory action to reduce environmental and human health risks. TEC’s long held objections to voluntary schemes in general, and the B-cycle scheme in particular, were outlined in a 2024 report on the Battery Recycling Crisis. These longstanding criticisms of the voluntary scheme predominantly relate to the following: 

• Delay: Allowing a voluntary industry led scheme to operate as they see fit, has delayed the implementation of a mandatory regulated scheme, with real targets, effective compliance and transparent reporting. 
• Limited Scope: B-cycle ACCC application sought and obtained authority to cover embedded, home storage and EV battery markets, but for those covered under existing schemes.⁴ Being voluntary and self directed, B-cycle chose initially only to cover the cheapest and easiest to recycle loose batteries, and has still not yet expanded to cover all embedded, home storage or EV batteries. 
• Low collection rates: Since inception, B-cycle has reported dismally low collection rates, ranging from 12% of estimated batteries at end-of-life for the FYE 2023,⁵ to 18.5% for the FYE 2025.⁶ B-cycle previously justified its low collection rates by comparison with certain EU schemes, which experienced similarly low rates in their first year of operation. Those same countries reported on average a 169% increase in collection rates between their first and second year, and by 2020 had an average collection rate of just over 50% of batteries placed on the market.⁷ Nothing like weak B-cycle’s.
• Free-riders: As a voluntary scheme, many importers and producers chose not to contribute levies for the costs incurred by the scheme, facing no reputational detriment.  B-cycle previously reported lost revenue from non-participating “free riders” at around $8.5m per annum⁸ although this figure ignores contributions from those out of B-cycle’s self imposed limited battery scope. While B-cycle has reported high industry participation, TEC’s October 2024 report identified only 34% of the 47 battery brands observed during in-store samples across NSW, QLD and ACT were B-cycle participants, while only 12% of the 155 AAA battery brands identified online for sale in the Australian market were identifiable as participants.⁹  
• Lack of sufficient targets: From publicly available sources, it appears the only target the federal government set for the B-cycle scheme on accreditation was to “increase” battery recycling. There were no targets to encourage design improvements, reduce hazardous content, improve recyclability or repairability, facilitate repair/refurbishment or second-life use of batteries, or support fledgling markets for recovered materials. 
• Insufficient levies imposed: The initial ACCC determination, based on B-cycle’s proposal, set a levy at 4 cents per equivalent battery unit. Unsurprisingly, the battery industry chose not to impose such a high levy on themselves, implemented a lower levy. The levies collected were not sufficient to cover the costs of recycling any significant portion of batteries collected, and have not been sufficient to cover the additional collection points or public safety campaigns required. Having lower funds available for B-cycle created a perverse disincentive against collecting the majority of batteries at end of life. Further, it has been reported by one recycler that the B-cycle rebate covered only 60% of the cost of battery collection and recycling.¹⁰ While the 2025 ACCC authorisation allowed B-cycle to significantly increase the levy – this being a voluntary scheme, risks increasing the competitive disadvantage to those good importers and producers who have signed up for the scheme.
• Education and Community awareness: Noting the potential fire risk posed by certain battery types, the B-cycle scheme initially intended to cover the costs of educating students and the community about batteries and the risks and benefits of recycling. TEC’s October 2024 report highlighted insufficient public communication of the scheme on participating battery manufacturers packaging, or the safety campaign material at any participating stores. Since then, the number of battery related fires from lithium batteries being disposed of incorrectly has only increased. Now across Australia, councils, emergency services and the recycling and waste industry are incurring additional costs to warn of the dangers of incorrect disposal; Costs that were meant to be covered by B-cycle.

In addition, it is now apparent B-cycle has not been privy to sufficient information to verify the quantities of batteries recovered, the material recovery rates or the ultimate end fate of those materials recovered. Noting B-cycle reported having paid more than $15m in rebates to collectors and recyclers for the 2024-2025 financial year – this  calls into question their ability to administer the current future schemes. 

Recycler integrity

The accusations against Ecocycle are serious and should be investigated fully. The allegations highlight the need for regular unannounced inspections by regulatory agencies to ensure a level playing field amongst all recyclers, and reduce opportunity for any providers to cut corners and risk environmental and human health harm. 

Suzanne Toumbourou, the CEO of the Australian Council of Recycling (ACOR) told Ewastewatch that the problem was two-fold; She said “Australia does have capability to do these things well, but that gets undermined when schemes don’t fund the right practices, and when regulators aren’t on the ball.” 

Having an industry design a scheme to police themselves will always result in favouring the implementation of the cheapest rather than the most effective practices. 

A spokesperson from Total Environment Centre this afternoon stated: “we need to fast track the March agreement by Australia’s Environment Ministers to have an inter-governmental agreement implementing regulated stewardship for batteries to ensure transparent, fully-funded and safe battery recycling takes place all across Australia.”

1. Archived webpage accessible here. Extended producer responsibility schemes over handheld batteries were considered by the NSW state government more than 20 years ago. ↩︎
2. Archived webpage accessible here ↩︎
3. Initial ACCC authorisation granted in 2020, Additional authorisation granted in 2025 with stricter reporting requirements ↩︎
4. ACCC Determination 4 September 2020. ↩︎
5.  B-cycle (2023) Positive Charge ↩︎
6. B-cycle (2025) Positive Charge ↩︎
7. TEC (2024) Battery Recycling Crisis Update (October) page 2. Please note, B-cycle’s collection rate figures are quoted in terms of percentage of end-of-life batteries, rather than percentage of batteries placed on the market ↩︎
8. https://bcycle.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/B-cycle-Achievements-20240829.pdf (Including online sales) ↩︎
9. TEC (2024) Battery Recycling Crisis Update (October) ↩︎
10. EcoBatt (2024) Battery Stewardship Council Announces Early Review of B-cycle Scheme. Webpage dated 4 June 2024,  accessed 7 May 2026. ↩︎