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GlobalPSC, SV and ABRI Facilitating Battery Product Stewardship

The Global Product Stewardship Council is pleased to announce that we are working with one of our longest-standing government members, Sustainability Victoria (SV), and the Australian Battery Recycling Initiative (ABRI) to facilitate battery product stewardship in Australia.

Sustainability Victoria’s BatteryBack program has been running for the last 5 years and has collected and processed over 6.7 tonnes of domestic batteries. However, 4.6 tonnes has been collected in the last 2 years, indicating more than just steady growth. It is SV’s intention to grow the collection system to increase the access for Victorians to drop off their spent batteries to be processed responsibility and develop the business case to reduce cost.

The GlobalPSC is assisting SV and ABRI through research, facilitation of stakeholder discussions, insight on lessons learned from overseas programs and developing the public policy and business case for battery product stewardship. The first step is initial stakeholder discussions, with an aim to developing a strategic plan to address domestic battery stewardship over the next three years.

Batteries hold special significance for the GlobalPSC. We led a European study tour that included industry-led battery product stewardship programs in Belgium and Switzerland (referred to as BEBAT and INOBAT, respectively). Several GlobalPSC corporate members, Call2Recycle, Raw Materials Company Inc., MobileMuster and TES-AMM Australia New Zealand operate programs that collect and recycle various batteries. One of our government members, the British Columbia Ministry of Environment, has also implemented product stewardship for batteries.

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