Battery Waste Management Rules 2022

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• The recent Battery Waste Management Rules 2022 notified by the government govern the entire life cycle of batteries, bringing in a holistic approach and a circular economy. 

What is a Circular Economy? 

• A circular economy entails markets that give incentives to reusing products, rather than scrapping them and then extracting new resources. 
  • The life cycle of products is extended.
• In practice, it implies reducing waste to a minimum.
• Recycled material is always cheaper than the fresh output from the mines. 
  • That is because the metals present in the black mass, an intermediate product derived after recycling batteries, contain battery-grade material that does not require complex extraction processes with mine output.  

Benefits of circular economy 

• Measures such as waste prevention, ecodesign and re-use could save companies money while also reducing total annual greenhouse gas emissions.
• Moving towards a more circular economy could deliver benefits such as reducing pressure on the environment, improving the security of the supply of raw materials, increasing competitiveness, stimulating innovation, boosting economic growth, and creating jobs. 
• Consumers will also be provided with more durable and innovative products that will increase the quality of life and save them money in the long term.

Battery Waste Management Rules 2022

• It aims at placing the producer and importer of batteries at the centre of battery recycling rules with extended producer responsibility (EPR) certificates.
  • The EPR certificates will be generated on a centralised portal managed by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
• The parameters for the certificates will include the weight of battery processed, percentage fulfilment of material recovery targets for the specified year and geographical source of battery.
• The current version of battery waste rules cover electric vehicle batteries, as well as portable, automotive and industrial batteries.
  • It builds upon and replaces the Battery (Management and Handling) Rules 2001 to comprehensively address the changing landscape of electric vehicles and advancements in battery technologies.
• Under the new rules, the producers, including battery importers, will be responsible for collecting and recycling or refurbishing batteries it has introduced into the market.
• It is outcome-based and can be measurable, if implemented according to their intended design. They define mandatory targets for collection and recycling within a compliance timeframe.
• An electric two-wheeler manufacturer has to meet a mandatory collection target of 70 percent of batteries placed in the market in 2022-23 and has a seven-year compliance time frame starting 2026-27. 
• For electric three-wheeler manufacturers, the metre starts earlier in 2021-22, according to their introduction into the market and their compliance cycle starts in 2024-25. 
• Electric four-wheelers have a longer compliance cycle at 14 years.
• After processing, producers have to mandatorily use a minimum defined percentage of recycled materials recovered from old waste batteries to produce new ones. 
• The Rules list out limits and labelling requirements for batteries. 
  • Labels indicating limits on the use of heavy metals cadmium, mercury and lead and a picture of a crossed-out bin to indicate that the batteries cannot be binned and have to be handed out to a registered battery collector.

Major issues with Battery Waste Management Rules 2022

• It does not provide visibility into the auditing process undertaken for producers, recyclers and refurbishers.
• The rules miss out on a huge opportunity to enable sustainability standards that have the potential to make India a benchmark for the global battery industry. 
• The labelling requirements only address lead-acid batteries used in internal combustion engine-driven vehicles. It misses out on requirements for lithium-ion batteries.
• Lack of information about chemistries would require the recycler to deploy additional resources to investigate the materials present in the spent battery feedstock before they can be processed.
• The new rules also miss out on using labels as an opportunity to reflect the battery’s carbon footprint.
• If not implemented correctly, the rules could fail to promote a circular economy and even disrupt the country’s climate mitigation targets.

Suggestions/ Way Forward

• Electric vehicles will be a key to decarbonising transport.
• The framed targets are fairly granular in nature and are differentiated by the type of batteries collected (lead-acid, lithium-ion, nickel-cadmium or zinc-based batteries. 
  • Non-compliance will be penalised with an environment compensation charge.
• The system will deploy a second line of deterrence in which names of defaulting entities will be made public on the CPCB website.
• Using carbon footprint as a parameter for producer responsibility could trigger research and development of batteries upstream with lower footprint and materials sourced from within the country.

Source: DTE