Three of the biggest names in household batteries are facing fines of nearly $3 million for failing to meet recycling targets in Ontario for 2023.
Energizer and Duracell will each have to pay $1 million to the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA) — which oversees recycling in the province — the highest amount that a company can be fined under the Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act, the provincial regulation that governs recycling.
Panasonic, which received a leader in sustainability award for 2024 from Call2Recycle Canada, the non-profit organization responsible for recycling batteries on the companies’ behalf, was fined $781,725.
“We are disappointed with the regulator’s decision,” said Joe Zenobio, president of Call2Recycle Canada, in an email. “The three battery producers are actively moving toward appealing the RPRA’s decision, which is viewed as punitive and unwarranted.
“We are confident that we have gone above and beyond what is required to increase collection rates in Ontario,” said Zenobio. “Educating the public on recycling batteries and building the proper infrastructure from collection to recycling activities is a process that takes time, and we remain committed to it on behalf of our producer members.”
All three companies recycled 19 per cent of the single-use batteries, such as AA or AAA, they sold in the Ontario market in 2023, short of the target of 40 per cent, according to RPRA.
“The fines were necessary because Duracell, Energizer and Panasonic failed to meet their 2023 minimum recycling requirements for single-use batteries and all three producers were insufficiently responsive to our previous efforts to encourage their compliance with Ontario’s recycling laws,” said the authority in an email.
“This action holds polluters accountable and ensures a level playing field for those battery producers who do follow Ontario’s environmental laws,” said RPRA.
The fines, issued by RPRA at the end of April, are millions of dollars less than what the companies would have paid to recycle enough batteries to meet the Ontario benchmark, according to the authority.
The fines are the first ones issued by RPRA since the provincial authority came into being in 2019 after the province downloaded the full cost of recycling onto the companies, manufacturers and distributors who supply and sell goods on the Ontario market, a cost that used to be shared with municipalities. The new model is referred to as producer responsibility.
Battery companies had until April of last year to report their recycling data for 2023, which was the first year for which the authority was allowed to issue administrative penalties, or fines, under the provincial legislation.
In an email to the Star, Panasonic said it has not decided how it will respond to the administrative penalty, “as we are currently evaluating our options under the guidance of our external legal counsel. We are also actively co-ordinating with Call2Recycle.”
Energizer said in an email that it had no comment. Duracell didn’t provide a response to the Star.
The companies have 15 days to appeal the fines, which were issued April 28.
In written judgments, RPRA said the companies blamed unachievable targets set by the province for their inability to meet the recycling requirement for single-use batteries, as opposed to the recycling target for rechargeable ones, which are larger and easier to collect. The companies met the recycling target for rechargeable batteries of 40 per cent.
This year, after public consultations that included industry input, the provincial government removed the separate recycling targets for single-use and rechargeable batteries and created one overall target of 45 per cent for 2025 and 50 per cent for 2026 and beyond.
All three battery companies pointed to the change in government regulation going forward as an indication that the 40 per cent recycling target for single-use batteries was unjust.
Energizer said the change in regulation was “a clear acknowledgment of the existing deficiencies of the recycling regulations” and “those changes are an acknowledgment that the existing framework required revisions,” according to the RPRA report.
Zenobio said in the email that having two different categories for battery collection — single-use and rechargeable — “not only made compliance unnecessarily complex but also failed to recognize the collective efforts and results of the industry, being burdensome and counterproductive.
“As a result, despite strong overall performance, Ontario’s unique regulatory structure meant that the province’s requirements were not met,” he said.
In 2020, the province had a 47 per cent diversion rate for single-use batteries, according to Stewardship Ontario, which used to oversee recycling for producers when the cost was still shared with municipalities. Rechargeable-battery recycling wasn’t measured under that system.
RPRA says the money from the fines will offset the cost of recycling programs in the province.
But paying the fines won’t make the battery companies complaint with the legislation.
RPRA said it an email that it “also has the power to prosecute non-compliant producers for failing to meet their regulatory requirements,” convictions that could result in fines of up to $250,000 each day a corporation is non-compliant and $500,000 a day for each subsequent conviction.
The authority said it couldn’t divulge it’s compliance strategy or speculate on any “enforcement action we may or may not take.”
