Eumundi Voice - Issue 89, 21 March 2024

Don’t fuel the fire

The waste industry is seeing a sharp increase in fires on garbage trucks and in waste facilities. Many of these incidents are a direct result of waste contaminated with lithium batteries and other household batteries which are a nogo for kerbside bins. Any battery has potential chemical energy stored that can be released if it is damaged.

In Qld discarded batteries are believed to have caused many fires on Brisbane garbage trucks. These incidents force truck drivers to dump their hot loads on suburban streets.

According to industry experts, disposable vapes are causing at least five fires a day inside Qld recycling plants alone. National Waste and Recycling Industry Council CEO Rick Ralph said the fire risk has reached crisis levels across the country. The Qld figure can be multiplied by seven when making an assessment of the national risk.

"That's about 35 fires a day, in some form, in recycling facilities," said Rick. "It is directly attributed to lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries because there is no effective or easy proper disposal for these items. A vape has an embedded battery and more than 1.8 million are being dumped into general waste every week."

As the incidence of battery fires in landfills continues to grow, they create hazardous fumes which are dangerous to firefighters and landfill operators. According to the hazardous waste infrastructure needs and capacity assessment report by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, the surge of li-ion entering the waste stream is particularly concerning.

The report estimates that by 2036 waste li-ion batteries will grow by more than 300% a year. The result is the generation of between 100,000 and 187,000 tonnes of waste per year. To put this into perspective, the Sydney Opera House weighs roughly 165,000 tonnes!

The fight for fire safety within the waste industry requires concerted action to tackle Australia’s rapidly growing li-ion waste stream. This can be addressed by further developing current battery recycling ecosystems to keep household batteries out of kerbside bins.

A nationwide effort such as this demands cooperation from the public, waste service providers and industry to support stewardship programs such as B-cycle, Australia’s official recycling scheme launched in January 2022. In its first six months of operation the scheme collected over 900,000kg of batteries for recycling from more than 3,200 drop-off points across all states and territories. Visit: t.ly/SqYp8 for your nearest drop-off point.

Safe and sustainable alternatives are also being developed by Australian companies as a longterm solution to the li-ion waste problem. Brisbane-based Redflow and Sydney-based Gelion have developed batteries with world leading zinc-bromide flow technology. Zincbromide batteries offer a safer and more reliable alternative to li-ion batteries. These next gen batteries also provide performance advantages over li-ion batteries by maintaining 100% state of health even after thousands of cycles.

Apart from new and emerging technologies, battery recycling education remains the waste industry’s best safeguard against waste fires. Cleanaway provides free resources for Australians to learn how to properly discard batteries and other potentially hazardous household waste. This includes information on free battery and e-waste recycling programs for residents to bring in their end-of-life household batteries as well as tips on handling and managing different battery types. Visit: t.ly/pJjbV.

Tania Watson