As battery deployment accelerates across transport, energy storage, and industrial applications, end-of-life management is becoming one of the important challenges for Europe’s battery value chain. Recycling is no longer a final operational step. It is a strategic mechanism for recovering critical raw materials, reducing environmental impact, and strengthening supply security.
Within the BASE Project, this shift is clearly visible. Our work shows that effective recycling outcomes depend less on downstream processing capacity and more on the availability of reliable, lifecycle-wide data. The Digital Battery Passport is emerging as the key infrastructure that enables this transition.
Why Battery Recycling Needs Optimisation
Battery recycling remains technically complex and economically inconsistent. Differences in battery chemistry, cell architecture, module design, and manufacturing origin make dismantling and treatment inefficient and difficult to standardise. In many cases, recyclers receive batteries with incomplete or missing information about composition, usage history, or safety status.
This information gap leads to conservative handling, longer processing times, lower recovery yields, and increased safety risks. It also limits recyclers’ ability to meet the rising recovery efficiency targets introduced under the EU Battery Regulation (EUBR).
From a strategic perspective, this inefficiency has broader consequences. Europe remains highly dependent on imported lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese. Without optimised recycling, material supply risks and price volatility will continue to grow.
How Digital Battery Passports Contribute to End-of-Life Management
The Digital Battery Passport provides structured, standardised, and lifecycle-linked information that remains accessible from manufacturing through use, reuse, second life, and recycling. At the end of life, this data helps recyclers to move from reactive handling to informed, process-specific decision-making.
In BASE demonstrations, DBP-aligned datasets typically include battery chemistry at the cell level, cathode and anode composition, electrolyte type, module architecture, disassembly instructions, safety classifications, and state-of-health indicators derived from usage history.
When this information is digitally accessible before physical processing begins, recyclers can select treatment pathways proactively rather than reacting to unknown inputs. This improves operational efficiency while reducing risks related to fire, contamination, or material loss.
Streamlining Collection, Sorting, and Pre-Treatment
Early-stage handling remains one of the largest bottlenecks in the battery recycling process. Without reliable identification, batteries are often grouped incorrectly, leading to mixed feedstock that reduces downstream recovery efficiency.
Across the BASE project’s test scenarios, DBP-enabled identification allowed collection and sorting operators to distinguish batteries by chemistry, format, and condition at intake. This reduced unnecessary manual inspection and minimised misclassification.
Indicative pilot results showed that chemistry-aware sorting reduced pre-treatment time by approximately 20-30% compared with conventional mixed-stream handling. Pre-discharge and dismantling procedures could be adapted to specific designs, lowering safety incidents and component damage.
These improvements have direct economic value. Reduced handling time translates into lower operational costs and higher throughput at recycling facilities.
Improving Material Recovery Rates Through Data Precision
The EU Battery Regulation sets progressively higher recovery efficiency targets for materials such as cobalt, copper, nickel, and lithium. Achieving these targets depends on precise knowledge of battery composition.
BASE recycling-focused demonstrations indicate that when recyclers have access to DBP-linked material data, including cathode formulation and known material origins, recovery yields improve significantly. In chemistry-specific processing scenarios, recovery efficiency for high-value metals increased by an indicative 10 to 18 per cent compared with processing unknown or mixed feedstock.
This uplift is strategically important. Higher recovery yields increase the economic viability of recycling operations and improve the quality of secondary raw materials. In turn, this supports manufacturers seeking to meet recycled content requirements and reduce reliance on primary materials.
Safer Recycling Through Usage and Health Data
Safety remains a critical concern in lithium-ion battery recycling. Residual charge, hidden damage, and unknown stress exposure all increase the risk of thermal events during transport and processing.
DBP-aligned data provides recyclers with access to state-of-health indicators, residual energy estimates, known defects, and recall flags. In BASE test environments, this enabled differentiated handling protocols based on actual battery condition rather than worst-case assumptions.
The result is safer operations, reduced incident risk, and lower insurance and compliance costs. From an ESG perspective, improved safety performance also contributes to social and governance indicators within sustainability reporting.
Closing the Loop and Creating Economic Value
Optimised recycling is not only about waste reduction. It is about creating reliable secondary material flows that can re-enter battery production with confidence.
Digital Battery Passports establish traceability links between recovered materials and new batteries. This enables manufacturers to document recycled content accurately and demonstrate compliance with regulatory thresholds under the EU Battery Regulation.
From an economic standpoint, high-purity recycled materials can re-enter the supply chain at a value close to primary materials. BASE observations suggest that transparent material provenance improves trust in secondary inputs, reducing price discounts that often apply to recycled feedstock.
This has direct implications for cost reduction, supply chain resilience, and long-term competitiveness.
Linking Recycling Data to ESG and Corporate Reporting
An increasingly important insight from BASE is that DBP-enabled recycling data does not sit in isolation. It directly supports broader ESG and corporate sustainability reporting requirements, including those under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
Material recovery rates, recycled content, waste reduction, energy use, and safety performance are all metrics that feature prominently in environmental reporting. When these indicators are derived from asset-level DBP data rather than aggregated estimates, reporting accuracy improves significantly.
This reduces audit risk, lowers reporting effort, and strengthens the credibility of sustainability disclosures. What begins as operational recycling data becomes a strategic ESG asset.
BASE Project and Smarter End-of-Life Management
The BASE Project addresses end-of-life optimisation through a trusted, interoperable Digital Battery Passport framework. BASE focuses on harmonised data models, secure data exchange, and lifecycle transparency, ensuring that recycling stakeholders receive the right information at the right time.
By integrating circularity indicators, material composition data, and traceability mechanisms, BASE enables higher recovery yields, safer recycling operations, and more efficient reintegration of secondary materials into the battery value chain.
This approach positions recycling not as a cost centre, but as a value-generating pillar of Europe’s circular battery economy.
Closing Thoughts
Optimising battery recycling is crucial for achieving Europe’s sustainability, climate, and industrial objectives. Digital Battery Passports provide the missing link between design, use, and end-of-life processing by delivering the data required to streamline operations and maximise material recovery.
Evidence emerging from the BASE project’s activities shows that when recycling decisions are informed by structured lifecycle data, performance improves across safety, efficiency, recovery yield, ESG reporting quality, and economic value creation.
As regulatory pressure increases and material demand continues to grow, Digital Battery Passports will become a foundational tool for closing the loop smarter and turning battery waste into a strategic resource.
The BASE project has received funding from the Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON) Research and Innovation Actions under grant agreement No. 101157200.
References:
European Commission. “Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 concerning batteries and waste batteries.”:https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32023R1542
European Commission. “Batteries - Environment”: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/batteries_en
Joint Research Centre (JRC). “Batteries”: https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-highlights-report-2024/batteries_en
International Energy Agency. “Recycling of critical minerals.”: https://www.iea.org/reports/recycling-of-critical-minerals
European Battery Alliance. “Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs”: https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/industry/strategy/industrial-alliances/european-battery-alliance_en
European Commission. “Corporate sustainability reporting”: https://finance.ec.europa.eu/capital-markets-union-and-financial-markets/company-reporting-and-auditing/company-reporting/corporate-sustainability-reporting_en