August 30, 2024: The UK’s Environment Agency has issued new guidance on the management of scrap lead acid batteries which contain or may contain persistent organic pollutants (POPs). 

Measures outlined in the guidance, made public on August 9, include requirements for the agency to be notified of, and give permission for, exports of lead batteries containing POPs to foreign destinations.

The guidance follows the launch of a public consultation last year by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The government said then that the management of waste containing POPs had become a much more complex issue over the past three years.

POPs controls originate from the Stockholm Convention, which led to the phasing out of high-risk POPs and increasing restrictions on threshold levels for the use of waste, the government said.

According to the UK, there are more than 30 POPs listed in the Convention that fall into three broad categories: pesticides, industrial chemicals, and unintentional by-products of combustion and some industrial and non-industrial processes.  

As a party to the Stockholm Convention, the UK is required to ban or restrict the production, use, import and export, of POPs. The convention also requires stockpiles containing POPs to be identified and managed, and waste containing POPs to be disposed of so that POPs are destroyed or irreversibly transformed.