EU Proposing Mandatory Battery Recycling

Ironsides writes "The BBC Reports that the European Union is working on a directive to mandate battery recycling. Among other things, it will ban more than trace amounts of cadmium and mercury and require all batteries to be removeable. If it passes, it will be interesting to see how this affects such devices as MP3 players that generally do not have removeable rechargeable batteries."

Comments

Won't change much in appearance

[_merlin]

All that's going to happen is the manufacturers will provide a facility for you to return the device so they can remove the battery. I don't think the bill says batteries have to be user-removable, just removable.

This could potentially affect things like real-time clock chips, though. You'd either have to make the whole chip removable, or use an external battery. "Suicide batteries" in arcade game cartridges could also come under this.

As for banning cadmium - how will cordless power tools go? NiCd still performs better than NiMH or LiIon for high-current applications.

Duracell Bunny

[Animaether]

In the EU, they'd have to eye -this- little pink guy instead:
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr= &q=Duracell+Bunny

( no, not the same company at all - quite heavy competitors in the U.S. actually, though Duracell doesn't use their bunny in the U.S. I think )

standardized LiIon battery?

[Gunstick]

I would wish that the Industry finally comes up with a standardized lithium-Ion Battery. In some form factor which enables it to be put on many types of devices. E.g. some sort of lego-type snap together or slide-on so if you want more capacity you just put more batteries.
Yes, not round cells but square ones. Why do batteries have to be round?