Nottingham City Council are warning residents to always keep electrical items out of any household bins, after an incorrect item caused the recycling inside a collection vehicle to set fire on Friday. This was the sixth fire the Waste and Cleansing department has dealt with this year, with others caused by electric scooters and rechargeable power banks.
Lithium batteries, which are found in almost all rechargeable items, can combust when crushed and mixed with flammable materials such as paper inside the collection vehicle, causing a fire inside the collected loads of up to 15 tonnes of waste or recycling.
When this happens, the collection crew have no choice but to execute emergency procedures – ejecting the entire load onto their current location of Roden Street to protect the vehicle from further risk of fire damage, with the Fire and Rescue Service sifting through the huge pile of recycling to find and extinguish the cause before it spreads to the rest of the material. The item that started the fire was badly burnt, but appears to have once been a power bank. It is not known where the power bank was collected from.
Thankfully, the quick actions of the crew and the Fire and Rescue Service protected the public and limited the damage to a £250,000 Refuse Collection Vehicle. After the fire was extinguished, the material was cleared from the road using a crane and sweepers, and the road re-opened.
Placing batteries inside your bin can lead to dangerous and disruptive incidents such as we’ve seen last week, which was the sixth fire dealt with in a Nottingham City Council collection vehicle in since January – and other local authorities are battling the same problem. Batteries and rechargeable items of any kind should never be put inside bins because of the fire risk – instead, use a dedicated electricals recycling point – you can find your nearest one at www.recycleyourelectricals.org.uk. The Household Waste Recycling Centre on Redfield Road can also recycle electricals and any type of batteries, including car batteries.
Whilst this incident meant the round could not be completed as scheduled on Friday, all planned collections have since been made.
