For most industries, lithium-ion fire risk walks in the front door as a known device. For the waste and recycling sector, it arrives hidden inside a bin bag — a vape, a power bank, a toothbrush, an e-bike pack — and the first time anyone sees it is often the moment it ignites. That is what makes this sector uniquely exposed, and why battery fires have become one of its defining operational risks.

The pattern holds internationally. In the United Kingdom, research for the Environmental Services Association attributes around 48% of all waste fires to lithium-ion batteries, at a cost of roughly £158 million a year (Eunomia & ESA, 2020) — and more recent ESA figures put battery-related fires in UK waste facilities and collection vehicles above 1,200 in 2023/24, up 71% in a single year (Resource.co, 2025). In the United States, the EPA documented 245 fires caused, or likely caused, by lithium batteries at 64 waste facilities across 28 states between 2013 and 2020, and concluded the municipal recycling sector was hit hardest (US EPA, 2021).

Why a waste site turns a stray battery into a fire

A lithium-ion cell fails when it is damaged — and a waste facility is, mechanically, a machine for damaging things. The same processes that make recycling work are the ones that set batteries off:

• Compaction in collection trucks and balers crushes cells hidden in the load.
• Shredding and sorting on the MRF line punctures packs that were never spotted.
• Embedded batteries in devices — vapes especially — are invisible to sorters and increasingly common (ACCC, n.d.).
• Stockpiles of dry, mixed material are the perfect fuel bed once a cell vents and ignites.

Once alight, these fires are stubborn and can reignite, and in a stockpile they can burn for days — with smoke, run-off and service disruption spreading the damage well beyond the ignition point.

Where the fires actually start

Across the data, a handful of locations recur: collection and transfer vehicles, tipping floors, the MRF sort line and balers, and bulk storage or stockpiles. Mapping your own incident history against those points tells you where detection and response equipment earns its place.

Reducing the risk

• Cut the batteries upstream. The cheapest fire is the one that never arrives. Public education and kerbside battery separation are why campaigns like the NSW EPA’s “Never Bin a Battery” sit alongside the new regulation (NSW Government, 2026).
• Detect early. Thermal cameras over sort lines and stockpiles, plus trained staff who can spot and pull batteries, shorten the time between a vent and a response.
• Isolate the suspects. A designated, non-combustible quarantine point for damaged or spotted batteries — away from stored material — stops one cell taking the pile with it. Containment bags are the practical tool here.
• Equip the hot spots. Position lithium-ion extinguishers at the sort line and in cabs for early knockdown, and keep large-format fire blankets on hand to contain a burning machine or bin and protect what’s around it.

You can’t sort out what you can’t see — so the job is early detection, fast isolation and containment that limits spread. See our waste & recycling facilities page, or the equipment range for the sector.