By Kesewa Opoku Agyemang  

Australia has invested significantly in clean technology and recycling infrastructure. Collection points for batteries and e-waste are now more widely distributed across urban environments. Yet recovery rates for batteries and e-waste remain persistently low.

This raises an important question:

If infrastructure exists, why are materials not flowing through the system?

Recent data from the Battery Stewardship Council highlights a key disconnect:

“Approximately 95% of Australian’s live within 15 minutes of battery drop-off points, yet recovery rates remain around 10-15%”

This suggests that access alone may not be the limiting factor.

The challenge appears to lie in what happens between a product reaching end-of-life and its eventual entry into a recovery system.

Emerging field observations from pilot mapping and end-user insights across Sydney suggest the presence of what we describe as the “Dormancy Gap.”

The Dormancy Gap refers to the temporal and behavioural disconnect between a product reaching end-of-life and its actual disposal into a formal recycling system.

During this period, materials are often:

·       Stored in homes, cars, or workplaces

·       Forgotten or deprioritised

·       Delayed due to uncertainty about current disposal pathways

As a result, materials do not immediately enter recovery systems, despite available infrastructure.

Early observations from field mapping across multiple locations indicate that while collection infrastructure may be present, it is often underutilised.

Visibility and accessibility of drop-off points vary significantly, and users frequently lack clear information or behavioural triggers to act. This suggests that interactions between users, infrastructure, and recovery pathways remain fragmented.

These findings are early-stage and indicative rather than definitive. However, they are consistent with broader national patterns observed across battery recovery systems.

This reinforces that the challenge may not solely be an infrastructure problem.

Research from CSIRO indicates that lithium-ion battery waste in Australia is growing at over 20% annually, yet collection rates have historically remained extremely low. This highlights a disconnect between system growth and system performance.

CSIRO further highlights that limited consumer awareness, lack of product stewardship schemes, and logistical constraints are key barriers to improving collection and recovery. These factors point to a broader system-level challenge.

Recovery outcomes are often shaped by a combination of interacting factors, including:

·       User behaviour and decision-making at the point of disposal

·       Market dynamics influencing material demand

·       Policy settings and economic incentives

·       System coordination across collection, transport and recovery

Industry practitioner insights reinforce that waste systems do not behave like traditional linear markets. Materials tend to move toward the lowest-cost pathway unless supported by intervention, regulation or demand-side pull.

As noted by Vaughan Levitzke PSM, who has over two decades of experience in the sector, this creates structural challenges for recycling systems which often involve higher costs and more complex processes than virgin extraction.

The Dormancy Gap therefore highlights a broader coordination challenge within the system.

While infrastructure enables potential recovery, it does not ensure continuous material flows. Bridging this gap may require more than additional collection points.

It would require:

·       Improved visibility of collection points

·       Behavioural triggers at the point of disposal

·       Clear and consistent communication across locations

·       Better alignment between collection, logistics and recovery systems

·       Data-driven insights to improve predictability of material flows

For industry and policymakers, this suggests that increasing infrastructure alone may not be sufficient to improve recovery outcomes.

There may be a need to consider how systems function as a whole – including how users interact with infrastructure and how materials move across the value chain.

Interventions that combine infrastructure with behavioural, economic, and coordination mechanisms are more likely to drive meaningful improvements in recovery rates.

Without addressing how materials move through the system – not just where infrastructure exists – recovery outcomes are unlikely to improve at scale.

This concept of the Dormancy Gap although still emerging, offers a useful lens for understanding why materials may not be progressing through recycling systems as expected.

Further research is required to quantify its scale and impact across different waste streams. However, early signals suggest that addressing this gap is critical to improving recovery performance in clean-tech recovery and circular economy systems.

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