Battery collectors call it quits as prices drop

By SIMON COLLINS

The company that has collected most of New Zealand's used batteries for recycling for the past 40 years wants to call it quits.

Christchurch-based Dominion Trading Company, whose 18 drivers collect used batteries from garages throughout the country, gave notice to recycling company Exide two months ago that it could no longer afford to collect them.

"The profitability of our business has fallen so much that it doesn't really justify the commitment," said managing director Vance Stewart.

"It's hard to believe, but old scrap steel is worth more than batteries."

The firm would now concentrate on scrap, which was not subject to the regulations for battery disposal.

Exide pays as little as 50c a battery, down from $5 a decade ago.

The collapse in the local price means that garages could now get higher prices by sending their used batteries to Australia or Asia.

But exports of hazardous wastes such as used batteries are banned under the Basel Convention if recycling facilities are available in the country of origin. The convention, which took effect in 1992, aims to minimise the risk of transporting hazardous substances.

This year the Ministry of Economic Development rejected an application by Australian-owned Sims Pacific Metals to export used batteries to Australia on the grounds that they could be recycled here. But it allowed small shipments of 2500 tonnes of used batteries in 2001 and 210 tonnes last year to a recycling plant in the Philippines.

In a letter released to the Green Party under the Official Information Act, the ministry told the Philippines Government that these shipments were justified because "occasionally oversupply situations cause the collection price to fall" in New Zealand.

Measurements by Greenpeace have found lead levels five to 20 times higher than acceptable safe limits in sediments in a stream running past the Philippines recycling factory.

News of the battery problems comes after a Herald investigation into the country's recycling systems.

The battery collection business has been hit by the closure over the past 15 years of two of the country's original three recyclers, Lucas Industries in Auckland and Amalgamated Batteries in Christchurch, leaving Wellington-based Exide with a monopoly.

Exide, whose American parent has operated under US chapter 11 bankruptcy law since April last year, has cut the prices it pays local garages for old batteries from $5 a decade ago to $1 in cities and 50c in rural areas today.

Green Party leader Jeanette Fitzsimons said it was absurd that New Zealand exported used batteries to the Philippines while Exide imported 12,000 tonnes of used batteries a year from Australia for its recycling plant at Petone, near Wellington.

"The Philippines is cheap labour and has lower environmental standards than we would have," she said.

But Mr Stewart said the export ban had helped to kill local recycling.

"If you don't allow exports of the batteries, you don't give Exide some competition to keep their prices up. If they drop their price too low, there is no incentive for the motor trade to recycle."

He is still negotiating with Exide and has just won a higher-priced contract in the central North Island, allowing him to raise the price to garages there by 20c a battery.

Sims Pacific general manager Rod Brown said his company would apply again in the next few days for a permit to export used batteries to Australia.

This time it would seek a lower volume of exports than it sought earlier this year.