A regulatory term referring to the materials or objects rejected during the battery manufacturing process.
Battery manufacturing waste covers scrap and rejected material generated during production that cannot simply be fed back into the same process as an integral input and therefore has to enter a recycling pathway. The definition matters because it draws a boundary between ordinary in-process reuse and waste that must be handled as a circularity obligation.
Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 concerning batteries and waste batteries
the materials or objects rejected during the battery manufacturing process, which cannot be re-used as an integral part in the same process and need to be recycled;
Reference: Article 3, point 51
This term matters when companies calculate process losses, recycling flows, and recycled-content-relevant recovery streams inside battery manufacturing operations. It affects how production scrap is classified, which actors take custody of it, and what evidence is needed to show that the material was actually recycled rather than merely discarded.
For Minespider, battery manufacturing waste is where production traceability starts to overlap with circularity evidence. It creates a need to track not just finished batteries and inbound raw materials, but also rejected material streams that still carry regulatory and sustainability significance.