G&P Batteries: Battery publicity campaign will be a hard challenge

The publicity campaign to encourage consumers to recycle batteries will be fragmented if battery compliance schemes are left to do it without an umbrella body, according to G&P Batteries managing director Michael Green.

Speaking to MRW Green said that meeting the UK battery targets looks harder and harder as the week goes by.

The biggest problem we have with legislation and meeting our targets is the publicity side of things. The latest consultation proposes that a national awareness campaign should be funded by the producer compliance schemes involved. But we have a problem in that the multiple compliance scheme system has no umbrella body to guide it.

This leaves the compliance schemes to work together to form their own publicity campaign and you could potentially end up with a fragmented publicity campaign if you cannot get everybody around the table.

Battery manufacturer Varta Consumer Batteries has also advocated that an umbrella body to monitor battery compliance schemes and give out a singular national message (see MRW story).

The latest consultation on the draft battery regulations ends on 13 February and the Government is seeking views from battery stakeholders on the draft regulations. The consultation states that the Government will carry out some publicity during 2009 for consumers on the need for recycling and the potential effect of batteries on the environment. But it proposes that the responsibility should rest largely with compliance schemes. The consultation also states that it anticipates that schemes will wish to co-operate to avoid conflicting and counter-productive messages to consumers.

Green said: There is still a great deal of ignorance among the public about recycling batteries and we do not have many containers in public places to get them to recycle. A big education job is needed to educate the public about recycling batteries. Its a bit of a curates egg.