EU regulators setting recycling targets for e-bike batteries need crucial end-of-life data. Accurec-Recycling conducted a study on the topic.
When a new waste stream such as e-bikes, vapes or coffee capsules arrives, policy makers set recycling or recycled content targets without knowing how many will be produced or sold. And they certainly don’t know for sure what the length of the product’s life cycle will be.
Take e-bikes as an example. The batteries are now used everywhere but how long will they last before being replaced? Selling large volumes today immediately increases the quantity placed on the market but the corresponding waste batteries will not arise until the 2030s. As a result, collection rates are likely to be distorted.
Only an estimate
EU regulators have set targets for such ‘light transport’ so that, from 2028, EU Member States must collect 51% of batteries. From 2031, the figure rises to 61%. The goals are based on estimating an end-of-life for the batteries of between 5.3 and 10 years. But it’s still an estimate.
Until now. Key research in Germany using the data from nearly 2 000 batteries provides the first figures from actual day-to-day operations. Helpfully, it supports the high end of the EU’s assumption of around 10 years.
The study has been carried out at Accurec-Recycling in Krefeld on e-bike batteries from the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Finland. The researchers point out they are measuring not the lifetime of a battery cell but its age on return: the time between manufacture and receipt at the recycling plant. Their data showed an unweighted mean of only 7.82 years.
However, the mean – less than the 10 years mentioned above – is distorted by the rapid growth of the e-bike market. ‘This raw value describes the reality of what arrives at the plant,’ the study points out. ‘As an estimate for an entire sales generation, however, it is too low, for a simple reason: the market has grown strongly within a short time.’
Life expentancy is key
Accurec-Recycling’ study emphasises why this research is important. ‘Until now, the reference quantity has been the mass sold in the three preceding years. For a product that is used for ten years or more, this is the wrong approach. The EU Batteries Regulation itself acknowledges this problem and obliges the Commission to revise the calculation method by 18 August 2027.’
The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, which guides policy makers, is now asking how many batteries are available for collection. A calculation based on past sales figures and an assumed lifetime indicates how many batteries reach the end of their use in a given year and are available for collection.
A more detailed article about Accurec’s study will be published in our September/October issue.
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