Battery Group Issues RFP

The Corporation for Battery Recycling (CBR), a Rosslyn, Va.-based nonprofit organization comprised of battery manufacturers Duracell, Energizer, Panasonic and Rayovac, has issued a request for proposal (RFP) that seeks a business partner to steward the collection and recycling of household batteries.

“Our vision is to have an industry-led voluntary program that redefines how U.S. consumers dispose of batteries, maximizing the reuse of spent battery materials and producing zero waste to landfill,” says Marc Boolish, president of CBR, in a news release. “We are seeking a stewardship organization with the capacity to build a national program that is convenient and inspires consumers to participate by recycling the batteries they use in a range of electronic and household devices.”

CBR members have been working together to review the implications from the life cycle analysis and create a framework for voluntary recycling where the use of recovered materials such as zinc, manganese and steel offsets the extraction impact of virgin materials.

Proposals are sought from what CBR calls qualified and experienced businesses to act as a stewardship organization, responsible for managing and delivering an environmentally positive and cost-effective national program for recycling primary batteries. The stewardship organization will be responsible for compliance with all laws and regulations, and must address technical or other challenges associated with recycling of household primary batteries.

The program will focus on the collection of all consumer batteries and recycling of primary cylindrical and prismatic alkaline manganese, zinc carbon, and lithium batteries up to a maximum of 2 kilograms and zinc air, silver oxide, alkaline manganese and lithium button/coin cells.

Preliminary research conducted by CBR indicates consumers typically don’t differentiate between primary batteries and others. Thus, the stewardship organization response must include a solution for other batteries (i.e., re-chargeables, lithium thionyl chloride, etc.) that are likely to appear in collection channels.

The creation of a communication and education program is an integral component of the stewardship organization’s responsibility, says CBR.

The program is to have a net environmentally positive system for all batteries (measured against a baseline of environmental impact of land filling batteries under current assumptions). Proposals must include recommendations for how to continuously improve environmental impact of batteries using the following four metrics:

• Reducing human health Impacts;
• Ecosystem quality;
• Global warming potential; and
• Resources depletion (including energy demand).

CBR also says effective tracking and reporting systems to manage the end-to-end collection, sorting, transportation and recycling of primary batteries against clearly defined goals are an important part of the proposal response.

Companies and organizations interested in more information about the CBR request for proposal are asked to visit www.recyclebattery.org or email Champa Gujjanudu at champa@bluskye.com.