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Legislation on producer responsibility

Is your company importing batteries or new or used vehicles or equipment that uses batteries? If you answered ‘yes’, your company is subject to producer responsibility.

Producer responsibility refers to companies’ obligation to handle the waste management when the products they have imported or manufactured are discarded. Handling waste management means organising a national network for collecting lead-acid batteries and recycling them. You also need to take care of informing end users and reporting on the imports and collections.

Producer responsibility is an obligation set in the Waste Act, and it applies to all batteries and accumulators. The only exceptions are batteries and accumulators included in products especially intended for military use, or to those related to the supervision of key security interests of the nation, or batteries or accumulators included in equipment designed to be sent into space.

Battery importers have established the Akkukierrätys Pb Oy producer organisation to handle their producer responsibilities cost-effectively and in accordance with the Waste Act. Via Akkukierrätys Pb Oy, you can handle the producer responsibility of all lead-acid batteries in used in vehicles or industry.

In Finland, producer responsibility is applied in six product categories. Producer responsibility must be handled separately for each of them. More information on producer responsibility.