War on waste fires
The Fire Protection Association
The UK's national fire safety organisation
Paul Stokes and Matthew Williams discuss why fires at waste management facilities are on the rise and what can we do to mitigate them.
It is estimated the UK Fire and Rescue Services attend approximately 300 significant fires at waste management sites each year, as reported by the National Fire Chiefs Council. Due to the potential for some of these fires to burn for days on end, it is more than likely that for every day in a calendar year, there is a waste fire either starting, continuing to burn, or being extinguished.
More often than not, the fires at waste facilities are caused by so-called “zombie batteries”. The name given to batteries that can be found in a number of everyday items that often get mixed in with general rubbish or other recycling, such as disposable vapes or small waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), including, but certainly not limited to devices such as mobile phones and power banks. Most of these items are powered by lithium-ion batteries.
As part of the Fire Protection Association's continuing commitment to increase fire safety awareness across the built environment, a number of informative feature articles are available to read on our website.?You can read the full article here.