Battery Fires At Recycling Centres Are Costing the UK £1bn a Year (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0185107140
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/08/23/0027208/battery-fires-at-recycling-centres-are-costing-the-uk-1bn-a-year
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/22/lithium-battery-fires-waste-recycling-centres-vapes-uk
> The Environment Services Association (ESA), the trade body for waste management companies, said its members had reported 1,518 fires in the year to March 2026. At least 541 of these fires were directly attributed to lithium ion batteries, the survey found. There were a further 216 battery fires in bin lorries [garbage trucks]. The ESA said the reported number of battery-related fires underestimated the scale of the problem, because in most incidents it was impossible to determine the cause of the blaze. A spokesperson said: "We know 40% of fires at recycling centres are caused by batteries, but we think the actual number is more like 70%."
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> It estimates that annual cost of these fires has increased from [2]£150m in 2021 to £1bn today ... The ESA is calling for a £5 deposit scheme on the sale of all vapes to ensure that vape users have an incentive to return used devices to retailers for safe disposal... [Patrick Brighty, the head of recycling policy at the ESA, said] "Vapes are among the biggest culprits because they're cheap, abundant and typically have a short use-life."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [3]AmiMoJo for sharing the news.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/22/lithium-battery-fires-waste-recycling-centres-vapes-uk
[2] https://brandfolder.com/s/mh9tknf7wt46v8fpc3jjp64
[3] https://www.slashdot.org/~AmiMoJo
The Rest Is Science (Score:3)
The Rest is Science podcast did an episode recently on "Why Lithium Batteries SUCK" (Aug 2). It is an interesting listen, as it mentions alternatives to lithium and their current state.
Ban or tax them (Score:2)
Its the British way!
No, probably neither of these approaches will work.
What's needed is a different battery chemistry, but as long as Lithium batteries are available at low cost, this problem isn't going away.
An ingenious approach would be to enable a resistor to slowly drain the battery along with undervoltage cutoff once a seal is broken and the device is about to be used.
Re: (Score:3)
I think the British way would be to require a license to vape.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you have a TV^H^H vape license said the TV^H^H vape license goon to the consumer.,,
Re: (Score:2)
The detector vans with a rotating nose on a mast, would be entertaining.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, the "resistor" could be the heating element but PWM'd at a low duty cycle.
Re: Ban or tax them (Score:2)
Whatâ(TM)s odd to me is that the Brits already have a solution to this, theyâ(TM)re just not deploying it. British councils *love* giving people 63 wheely bins for them to sort increasingly difficult to identify waste into. Why not just give out a container for people to put waste batteries/battery containing devices in? Alternatively, do the same as most councils do with glass, and put a big metal box in a fairly central location to contain them until the bin men come and empty it?
Re: (Score:2)
> Why not just give out a container for people to put waste batteries/battery containing devices in?
How many batteries per week do you think people in Britain discard?
The problem is obvious (Score:2)
If it's very easy to properly dispose of something, it will be disposed properly.
If it requires driving across town, when the recycling facility is open, waiting in line, filling out a form and paying a fee, proper recycling will be rare
833,333 GBP per fire avg? (Score:2)
so they're saying 1200 fires cost 1B GBP.
That's 830K GBP average per fire which seems... rather high. Don't these places have some form of on site fire detection and suppression? like some fire hoses or something. These little batteries don't have THAT much energy in them; they're not EVs.
(and yes even EVs you use water on if they catch fire. just a lot of it over a long time. i mean ideally you'd just put it in a container of water and top of the water as needed as it boils off )
Hold up... (Score:2)
If only there was some way to process these flammable batteries in a way that their components could be reused again for batteries, like some sort of cycle that goes again and again, a "recycle" if you will.
I dunno, I'm just spitballing here.
Re: Hold up... (Score:3)
We would have to require manufactures to include safe and simple recovery processes.
And regulating businesses is filthy Communism, so maybe that will fly in the UK and EU, but never in the good old USofA.
Re: (Score:2)
> If only there was some way to process these flammable batteries in a way that their components could be reused again for batteries, like some sort of cycle that goes again and again, a "recycle" if you will.
The problem is that there aren't enough of the little appliance-size batteries to economically recycle, but there are enough that sometimes they cause fire.