FEATURE
responsibility of the e-bike producer to have a plan for recycling the batteries it puts to market. Brands can collect these batteries themselves from retailers, but this is again a specialist task that your typical fleet van isn’t best placed to handle. This can also be inefficient in cost terms. Quite often, businesses report disposing of spent batteries as part of trade waste at local authority sites, something which requires a little paperwork and declaration of what you’re disposing of. There is a small cost to dispose of trade waste, of course.
Thus far, some of the bike industry’s e-bike brands send spent units to Ecolamp Recycling Solutions, which handles the class 9 dangerous goods, moving them from A to B in UN-approved fire drums. Specialized was among the first brands to link up with the specialist recycler, and the Bicycle Association has since sought to forge a market- wide path to aiding brands with the recycling challenge en masse. Having completed a 12-month pilot alongside ERP and 50 retailers in the north-west of England between 2023 and 2024, the BA is now looking to refine the strategy as the original model was deemed unviable. Steve Garidis, Executive Director at the BA told us, “We wanted to understand the logistical and operational requirements of collecting and properly recycling end-of-life e-bike batteries. This
independent retailers, even giants like Decathlon, plus bike brands, to organise bulk collections with numerous deposit locations dotted around the country. A levy of £30 is charged to help support the recycling process. Russ Taylor from Velorim told BikeBiz, “Our service operates
‘WE WANTED TO UNDERSTAND THE LOGISTICAL AND
OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENTS OF COLLECTING AND PROPERLY RECYCLING END-OF-LIFE E-BIKE
BATTERIES. THIS IS A PAIN POINT FOR BOTH UK E-BIKE SUPPLIERS WHO HAVE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS TO TAKE BACK AND RESPONSIBLY DISPOSE OF BATTERIES THEY HAVE PLACED ON THE MARKET, AND FOR RETAILERS AND REPAIR WORKSHOPS WHO NEED AN EASY WAY TO REMOVE END-OF-LIFE OR DAMAGED BATTERIES FROM PREMISES.’
just like our tyre and tube service. The customer signs up for the scheme. We send out an appropriate container for the waste batteries (including fire suppressant), which also satisfies premises insurance issues. When the container is full, we collect and provide a replacement container for their next batch.” Velorim’s containers will take about ten 50cm long Li-ion batteries, and collections are managed alongside the firm’s work to recycle the bike trade’s rubber goods. All of this is handled by one courier, and it heads onward to Recyclus, which has the first UK-based, industrial- scale battery recycling facility, thus preventing material from needlessly disappearing offshore for
recycling. Recyclus already handles high volumes of e-waste for one of the
is a pain point for both UK e-bike suppliers who have legal obligations to take back and responsibly dispose of batteries they have placed on the market, and for retailers and repair workshops who need an easy way to remove end-of-life or damaged batteries from premises.”
This pilot aimed to establish a foundation for a nationally viable scheme, where bike shops would serve as collection points for all brands and types of e-bike batteries, with a centrally procured waste partner in place for low-cost collection and recycling. With an ambition to make further progress this year,
Steve adds “The Bicycle Association has been working on an alternative model in which only participating producers’ batteries are treated, which it hopes to secure sufficient backing for by the end of this year, and still cover the majority of legitimate, legal and responsible e-bike suppliers and their batteries.”
Many shops that have a solution in motion may already be working with Velorim Recovery, a business that works with
40 |September 2025
UK’s largest cycling and motoring chains, among others. The Recyclus Group’s Wolverhampton subsidiary LiBatt has recently scored a chunk of an £8.1 million Clean Tech Innovator grant. This Government initiative is part of a £2.5 billion programme aimed at supporting the UK supply chain for EV manufacturing and with the circular economy in mind. BikeBiz reached out to this business to find out whether its
current 22,000 tonnes of material per annum cap left enough bandwidth for the e-bike industry to start sending batteries for recycling en masse. “While exact volumes for e-bike batteries aren’t tracked separately, we currently process several thousand batteries per year, and the plant is more than capable of supporting the entire sector. We’ve been receiving lithium-ion e-bike batteries since July 2023. We’re actively engaging with stakeholders across the cycling industry and welcome collaborations with manufacturers, retailers, and distributors,” the Midlands firm’s Executive Chairman and Co-Founder Robin Brundle told us when we first reached out. An encouraging sign that a solution to a growing problem exists here and now. Recyclus is plotting a path of expansion, expecting the inflows of battery material to ramp up as time goes on. Further
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