Overview#
Recycled content is the part of a product that comes from recycled material rather than newly extracted, or virgin, material. It is normally expressed as a percentage by weight, so a battery casing with 30 percent recycled content draws roughly a third of its mass from recovered material.
EU law has shifted from treating this as a voluntary selling point to setting hard minimums. The Battery Regulation requires defined shares of recycled cobalt, lithium, nickel and lead in certain batteries, with the thresholds climbing on a schedule. The Ecodesign Regulation can set recycled-content rules product group by product group, and separate packaging rules push in the same direction.
Why it is rising up the agenda#
Minimum recycled content is one of the more concrete levers behind the EU's circular economy goals. A target only works if recovered material can be measured and traced back into new products, which is why the rules increasingly come with verification and documentation duties rather than just a headline percentage.