NSW's new battery rules: what is due to change on 1 October 2026

Last verified 2026-09-30

From 1 October 2026, NSW is due to become the first state in Australia where battery brand owners are legally responsible for collecting and recycling everyday batteries. The scheme is set up by the Product Lifecycle Responsibility Regulation, and the NSW Environment Protection Authority polices it.

Not in force yet. The Act behind these rules starts on a day the NSW Government sets by proclamation. The regulation starts on 1 October 2026 only if the Act has started by then; otherwise it starts on the day the Act does. When we checked on 30 September 2026, the NSW legislation website showed none of the Act’s provisions as having commenced.

Here’s what it covers, who it puts duties on, and what to expect after 1 October.

The short version

• The duties fall on battery brand owners, the owners of the brand names batteries are sold under in NSW and the businesses that bring batteries into NSW to sell, not on the people who use them.
• Keep doing what you do now. Tape the terminals, keep used batteries out of every kerbside bin, and drop them at a collection point. The main recycling page covers it.
• The rules cover the batteries you’d expect: AA to 9 volt, button cells, removable rechargeables up to 5 kg, e-bike and e-scooter batteries, and power banks. Not phone, laptop or car batteries.
• The change you’ll notice comes later. Brand owners have to fund enough collection points across metro and regional NSW, with each one showing what it takes. That arrives through plans lodged after the scheme’s administrator is appointed, and when we last checked, none had been named.
• The date is “due”, not “done”. The regulation starts on 1 October only if the Act it sits under has been brought into force by then. We’ll check on the day and update this page.

What the rules actually are

Two pieces of law. The Product Lifecycle Responsibility Act 2025 is the framework. NSW Parliament passed it in 2025, and it lets the government make rules that put responsibility for a product onto the people who sell it. The Product Lifecycle Responsibility Regulation 2026, published on 20 February 2026, is the first set of those rules, and it’s about batteries.

The regulation sets up what the law calls a “product stewardship scheme” for batteries. In plain terms: if you bring batteries into NSW to sell, you have to be part of a scheme that collects them at the end of their life, recycles them safely, and tells the public how to use it.

NSW is the first state to do this. The NSW Government describes the change as “shifting from a voluntary stewardship scheme to a mandatory government-regulated approach”. Once a scheme administrator is in place, a brand owner that supplies regulated batteries in NSW must be a party to an agreement with it.

Which batteries are covered

The regulation lists exactly which batteries count. These are covered:

• AAA, AA, C, D, 9 volt and 6 volt lantern batteries
• Button batteries and button cells
• Removable rechargeable batteries weighing 5 kg or less
• Rechargeable batteries that power e-bikes, electric scooters, self-balancing scooters and electric skateboards
• Portable power banks weighing 5 kg or less

These are not:

• Lead acid batteries, which includes car batteries
• Mobile phone batteries
• Laptop and tablet batteries
• The back-up batteries built into emergency lighting

Anything not on the covered list is out. So the sealed-in batteries in things like electric toothbrushes, vapes and Bluetooth speakers aren’t part of this scheme yet. The EPA has said it plans future rules for batteries embedded in consumer electronics, for home batteries and for electric vehicle batteries.

One rule will matter to e-bike and e-scooter owners: if the battery can’t practicably be removed from the vehicle, the regulation treats the whole vehicle as a regulated battery. Where a sealed-in e-bike battery goes today is on our e-bike and e-scooter page.

What changes for you

The regulation places its duties on brand owners and on the organisation that will run the scheme.

What the law requires for you: the regulation says the scheme has to provide:

• Enough collection points in both metropolitan and regional areas that people can reasonably get to one.
• Every collection point showing which types of battery it takes. Until then, we’ve compared what today’s bins say they take.
• Collection bins built for the job: stand-alone points undercover, well ventilated and away from direct sunlight and heat, with bins designed to keep out moisture, heat and items other than batteries, and to contain a fire if one starts.
• Public awareness of what can be recycled, where the collection points are, and how to safely get rid of the batteries the scheme doesn’t cover.

When you’ll see this depends on a step that hasn’t happened yet. The EPA intends to appoint a “product stewardship organisation” to run the scheme on behalf of the brands. It opened the process to choose one in June 2026, and when we last read its own page, updated on 20 September 2026, it still described that appointment as its intent rather than as done. Once an organisation has entered into its agreement with the EPA, it has three months to prepare and lodge a plan setting out how it will deliver the scheme, including the collection network.

Who the administrator will be hasn’t been announced.

If there’s no administrator for a type of battery, the regulation makes each brand owner responsible for meeting those requirements itself. The EPA’s stated intent is to appoint one.

Who has to do what

If you sell batteries, the regulation and the EPA’s product stewardship page, both in the sources below, set out the detail. In outline:

• The duties land on brand owners: the owner of the brand name a battery is sold under in NSW, and the person responsible for bringing a battery into NSW for supply. Someone who only transports or warehouses batteries for another person isn’t a brand owner.
• Brand owners have to join the scheme and contribute fees that fund it, tell the EPA before they first supply batteries, and keep records of what they supply.
• A brand owner supplying less than 24 kg of regulated batteries in NSW in a financial year is exempt from the requirement to join the scheme (or meet its requirements directly) and from the regulation’s record-keeping and action-plan duties.
• The maximum court penalty for a corporation that breaches a safety requirement is 8,000 penalty units, which is $880,000 at the NSW rate of $110 a unit. For an individual it’s 2,000 penalty units, or $220,000. Both can increase for each day an offence continues.

Why NSW is doing this

Fires. Fire and Rescue NSW recorded 332 lithium-ion battery incidents in 2025. The waste and recycling industry estimates that between 10,000 and 12,000 fires each year in trucks and at waste facilities are caused by improper disposal, use and poor design of lithium batteries. The EPA’s own summary of the reform says that since 2024, battery fires from e-micromobility devices and consumer electronics “have killed four people, injured 324 and caused 1,000 evacuations”.

When the draft rules went out for comment, the Environment Minister put it this way: “These fires are hot, fast and incredibly difficult to put out.”

What to do now

The same advice as before:

• Don’t put any battery in a kerbside bin. Not one of them.
• Tape the terminals with clear sticky tape before you store or drop off a battery.
• Use the collection points that exist today. The locators below are the operators’ own live maps.
• If a battery is swollen, damaged or hot, it doesn’t go in a collection bin at all. That’s its own page.

The dates

• 2025: the Act passes NSW Parliament.
• 16 October to 14 November 2025: public consultation on the draft regulation. 58 submissions.
• 20 February 2026: the regulation is published.
• June 2026: the EPA opens its process to appoint a scheme administrator.
• 1 October 2026: the regulation is due to commence, provided the Act has commenced by then.
• Within three months of an administrator entering into its agreement with the EPA: its plan for the scheme is due with the EPA.

What we’ll be watching on 1 October

We’ll check on the day whether the Act has been brought into force, whether an administrator has been appointed, and what the EPA has published, and we’ll update this page. The date at the top tells you when we last did.