Lighting Council Australia has partnered with the Queensland Government to divert emergency and exit lighting batteries from landfill.

The pilot recycling program EXITCYCLE was launched at a ceremony in Brisbane with the Queensland Minister for Environment and Heritage Protection, the Hon Dr Steven Miles.

It is expected that the pilot program – which will run in Queensland for 12 months – will provide valuable information on collection and recycling issues associated with this class of batteries.

Lighting Council Australia hopes to migrate the pilot scheme to a fully-fledged voluntary national recycling program at the end of the 12 months trial.

Emergency and exit lighting is used in a wide range of commercial and industrial buildings. Almost all rely on batteries for back-up power.

Lighting Council’s CEO, Bryan Douglas, emphasised the importance of the EXITCYCLE initiative.

‘Around five million nickel cadmium batteries are sent to landfill in Australia each year, which equates to some 90,000 kg of cadmium’, he said.

‘When it comes to heavy metals most attention is focused on mercury. However it should be remembered that in most respects cadmium rivals mercury in its toxicity and potential harm to human health and the environment’, Mr Douglas said.

EXITCYCLE will operate along similar lines to the successful voluntary FluoroCycle program run by Lighting Council Australia to recycle mercury-containing lamps. Private and government sector organisations in Queensland will be approached to become Signatories to the scheme. Commercial Signatories will commit to recycle all their end-of-life emergency and exit lighting batteries, or in the case of Facilitator Signatories will commit to promote the scheme to users of these batteries.