Health fears on battery recycling

The Lib Dems are worried about pollution from batteries

The UK's record on recycling household batteries is "shameful" and the worst in Europe, the Lib Dems have said.

Figures obtained by Lib Dem spokesman Dan Rogerson suggest the UK recycles 0.5% of all batteries sold, compared with Belgium's 59%.

Mr Rogerson said burying or burning batteries caused a "massive risk" to the environment and people's health.

The government says recycling is improving and argues the UK has one of the best records on car batteries.

Up-to-date figures?

Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw gave the most recent recycling figures across Europe in a parliamentary answer to Mr Rogerson.

The UK's record compared with Sweden recycling 55% of the small batteries used in phones, clocks, watches and cameras, 44% in Austria, 39% in Germany, 16% in France and 14% in Spain.

The latest figures are for 2002 - something Mr Rogerson shows the government is paying little attention to the issue.

"It is deeply worrying that the latest official figures place the UK at the bottom of the European battery recycling league, with only 1 in 100 batteries shamefully recycled," said the MP.

Health fears

The UK looked set to be "way off" new European Union battery recycling targets in the process of being agreed.

A draft EU directive, which could be adopted later this year, sets a target of recycling between 25% and 45% of portable batteries sold each year.

Ministers have said that putting batteries in landfill sites can mean toxic cadmium, lead and mercury leak into the environment.

Mr Rogerson said: "An estimated 600 million batteries are thrown away in landfill sites each year, enough power when used to light a torch for more than a million years.

"Batteries contain substances which are toxic to human health and can leach into the groundwater if they are simply thrown away with other rubbish. A strategy to ensure their safe collection is clearly long overdue."

'Action under way'

A spokesman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the UK recycled about 90% of car batteries because of the market value of lead and because facilities were available.

But there had been no UK recycling plants for household batteries until last year and the costs of sending them abroad was a deterrent.

Cheap landfill costs in the UK also meant there had been little incentive to start a recycling scheme, he said.

But local councils had realised since 2003 there would in future be a battery recycling system and some authorities were beginning kerbside collection schemes.

"This is accompanied by increasing support from consumers, who see batteries as 'nasty' and tend to support collection and recycling," said the spokesman.

With the new EU targets looming, the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) have been asked to carry out some work to find the best way to collect and recycle batteries in the UK, he said.