Electric car battery recycling in Belgium

Yes, your electric car battery does get recycled, and in Belgium you have already paid for it. Since January 2026, an environmental contribution of €5 to €100 appears on the invoice of every new electrified vehicle. It funds collection, quarantine, dismantling and treatment of the pack. Here is where it goes and what comes back out.

Are electric car batteries really recyclable?

Yes, and it is a legal obligation rather than a marketing line. EU Regulation 2023/1542, in force since 18 August 2025, requires every manufacturer selling a battery in Europe to organise its take-back and treatment. In Belgium that duty is pooled into a single body: Febelauto, the producer responsibility organisation for vehicles and traction batteries.

Recycling a traction battery means extracting its metals (lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, manganese) and feeding them back into the production of new batteries. Two routes coexist: pyrometallurgy, where modules go into a furnace above 1,000 °C that separates metals from everything else, and hydrometallurgy, which dissolves the active material in chemical baths. Umicore, in Hoboken near Antwerp, combines both.

Recycling should not be confused with second life, which is a different thing entirely. Recycling destroys the battery to recover the material. Second life keeps the battery intact and puts it somewhere else. The same pack often goes through both, in that order.

In practice, the belief that batteries end up in landfill is mostly a memory: it was true of the first portable lithium batteries of the 2000s, when no collection chain existed. Today in Belgium, 98 % of the weight of an end-of-life vehicle is recycled, one of the best scores in Europe.

What happens to your electric car battery in Belgium?

It follows an eight-step route supervised by Febelauto, from the approved centre to either a furnace or a storage cabinet. The starting point never changes: a centre agréé+, the only kind of facility licensed to remove a high-voltage battery from a vehicle.

Once removed, the battery is classified as dangerous goods. It travels in certified packaging, arrives at one of the three Belgian storage and treatment partners, and spends 72 hours in quarantine in a container fitted with a fire suppression system and wired straight to the local fire brigade. That quarantine exists to catch packs from crashed cars that start heating up, before they reach the dismantling line.

Modules are then fully discharged, and the recovered electricity is reused on site. Then comes sorting, which decides everything: each module is tested, then labelled either reusable or recyclable in Febelauto's battery management system. Recyclable packs go to Umicore in Belgium, Snam in France or Fortum in Finland. Reusable ones take the other road, described further down.

Volumes remain modest, which is normal: Belgium's electric cars are young. Febelauto collected 5,079 batteries in 2024, and tonnage went from 31,585 kg in 2021 to 412,400 kg in December 2025. A rise of 1,200 % in four years, from a very low base. The real peak will come when the Renault Zoes and Nissan Leafs of 2018-2020 are scrapped in numbers.

What if my battery fails while the car still drives?

The route is the same, but the entry point differs: the brand's own garage removes the battery and feeds it into the Febelauto network. The environmental contribution you paid at purchase covers this case too, replacement and repair included. Never touch a traction battery yourself.

How much does battery recycling cost, and who pays for it?

You pay it when you buy the new vehicle, as an environmental contribution of €5 to €100 for the battery. On top of that sit the €10 vehicle contribution, in force for cars and vans since 1 January 2024 and extended to buses, trucks and motorcycles on 1 January 2026.

Here is the scale Febelauto has applied since 1 January 2026, VAT included. Chemistry and weight are the only two criteria that count.

For a passenger car the total therefore lands between €35 and €110. On a budget of €25,000 to €50,000 that is trivial, which is probably why nobody raises it in the showroom.

One point deserves flagging, because it causes confusion: not every importer bills this contribution as a separate line. Some fold it into treatment fees built into the purchase price, invisible on the order form. Febelauto states that the point of sale must then inform you. If you see nothing on your quote, ask the question rather than assuming you are paying nothing.

What exactly does the contribution cover?

Free collection of the battery and of the end-of-life vehicle within the approved centre network, transport in certified packaging, secure storage, treatment, the regulatory traceability imposed by Europe, and the future battery passport. It does not cover recycling the tyres you will replace along the way.

Why does an LFP battery cost twice as much to recycle as an NMC one?

Because it holds nothing worth selling. An NMC pack is packed with nickel, manganese and cobalt, three high-value metals the recycler recovers and monetises. An LFP pack is made of iron and phosphate, worth almost nothing per kilo. The recycler cannot pay for the job out of the material, so the contribution has to cover the real cost.

The Belgian scale reflects that bluntly, with a factor of two on every line. In the 350 to 1,000 kg bracket, an NMC battery is charged €50 and an LFP one €100. Take two cars from the same segment: a compact with a 300 kg NMC pack pays €25, a city car with a comparable LFP pack pays €50.

The paradox is real and worth stating outright. LFP is the more virtuous chemistry in use: no cobalt, so no dependence on Congolese mining, and a tolerance for daily charging to 100 % that stretches its working life. It is also the one that weighs most on the end-of-life bill. If you are hesitating between the two chemistries, our LFP against NMC comparison tackles the question from the angle of daily use, where a €25 or €50 gap obviously counts for nothing.

What recovery rate is actually achieved?

Two figures circulate, and they do not measure the same thing. European law requires 65 % of a lithium-ion battery's total weight to be recovered since the end of 2025, and 70 % by the end of 2030. The 95 % Umicore quotes covers the recovery rate of the targeted metals once the battery has been shredded.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 sets targets per material, rising in steps: 90 % recovery for cobalt, copper, lead and nickel by the end of 2027, then 95 % by the end of 2031. For lithium, the hardest to extract cleanly, 50 % by the end of 2027 and 80 % by the end of 2031. From 18 August 2031, every new battery sold in Europe must also contain a minimum of recycled material: 16 % cobalt, 6 % lithium, 6 % nickel and 85 % lead.

The gap between the two figures is not sleight of hand, it is physics. A 500 kg battery is also casing steel, cooling aluminium, insulating plastic and electrolyte. The targeted metals are a fraction of that. Recovering 95 % of that fraction does not add up to 95 % of the total weight.

Can a used battery still be useful for something else?

Yes, and it is the preferred route before recycling. A module that no longer has the punch to move 1,800 kg remains perfectly able to store electricity in a technical room, where nobody asks it to deliver 150 kW under acceleration.

Febelauto sends those modules to circular partners, including Watt4Ever, a Belgian company that tests them one by one and assembles them into stationary storage systems. A module reclassified this way lasts roughly ten more years, with a carbon footprint 80 % lower than a new battery of equivalent capacity.

The textbook Belgian case sits in Olen, in the Campine region, where Umicore and Engie assembled 48 used electric car batteries into an industrial storage system that shaves the site's consumption peaks. Fifty cars, one industrial installation: that is the order of magnitude.

At what state of health does a battery leave the car?

The threshold the industry commonly applies sits around 70 to 80 % of remaining capacity. Below that, range becomes too short for road use, but the battery stays perfectly usable in stationary duty. It is also the threshold that triggers most manufacturer warranties, generally 8 years or 160,000 km, set out in our guide to battery warranties.

"Used batteries from hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles are tomorrow's challenge. Their number will grow exponentially." — Catherine Lenaerts, managing director of Febelauto

What you actually have to do

As an owner, almost nothing, and that is by design. Four situations cover most cases.

1. Your electric car is being scrapped. Take it to a centre agréé+: the list is published on Febelauto's website, and the network counts more than a hundred points across Belgium. Take-back is free, battery included, whatever state the vehicle is in.
2. Your battery has failed and the car still drives. Go through a garage of the brand. It removes the battery and feeds it into the chain. The treatment cost is already covered.
3. You are selling the car second-hand. Nothing to do: the contribution stays attached to the vehicle, not to the owner. It was paid once, when the car was first placed on the Belgian market.
4. You have recovered modules and want to reuse them. Go through a stationary storage professional. A high-voltage module rigged up in a garage is a fire risk, not a weekend project.

The only genuinely useful move is to refuse parallel channels. A battery that leaves the approved network also leaves traceability, and rarely ends up at a recycler.

Frequently asked questions