Recycling in vogue

Battery residues become ingredients for detergents

Banner Batterien employs 750 people.(Bild: Banner)

In times of increasing sustainability awareness and pressure to reduce CO2 emissions, the automotive industry is also moving into focus. One supplier, Banner, has long recognized the signs of the times: The Leonding-based company is pushing the collection of used vehicle batteries and their recycling.

How much of a burden are they on the environment? When people talk about e-mobility, the focus quickly shifts to the lithium-ion batteries needed to power the vehicles and their CO2 footprint.

But even combustion cars can't function without batteries: in addition to the 12-volt product for the vehicle electrical system, they also need a starter battery. Banner manufactures both in Leonding. The family-run company, managed by Andreas and Thomas Bawart, produced around four million units in the 2023/24 financial year.

High proportion of recycled lead
Sustainability and resource-conserving handling are the order of the day: more than 95% recycled lead is used in the production process for starter and on-board power supply batteries, while recycled plastic is predominantly used for the battery boxes.

21.7 million batteries already collected across Austria
And what happens to batteries that are no longer used? Banner is one of the founding members of the Umweltforum Starterbatterien, or UFS for short, which has collected and recycled around 21.7 million used vehicle batteries and around 230,000 tons of lead throughout Austria over the last 28 years. Sulphuric acid from the batteries is processed into sodium sulphate, which is used in the production of detergents and glass.