Following three recent incidents in refuse collection vehicles, Leeds residents are being reminded about the dangers of binning batteries and hot ash from BBQs.
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00:00We're down here today at HM Martins Mirth. We accept all the green bins from
00:05Leed City Council, come here on a daily basis and we take that material in and
00:10segregate it all out into different commodities. We've had three separate
00:14incidents of refuse wagon fires and we suspect this is from barbecue hot ashes
00:19or lithium batteries in either in vapes or there are many other examples of
00:26domestic small appliances where you find lithium batteries which we are asking
00:33people not to dispose of in any of the recycling or general waste bins. We've got
00:39here a box full of lithium batteries and there's all sorts in here so you've got
00:44batteries from from drills, you've got items that are for recharging your own
00:52battery so it's like a battery bank, another battery bank, there's iPhones,
00:58there's more battery banks here, there's various items that we've got but what we
01:04do get is a lot of batteries that are coming in that have already been taken
01:08out of the the casing and this is a major problem because lithium batteries they do
01:13store their charge and you've got the terminals that's exposed on the top
01:18when that's going through the process all it needs is a steel can or an aluminium
01:22can to arc across that we've got a spark because we've got plenty of paper and
01:27cardboard in here we've got a potential fire every time that that happens. The
01:30advice is if there are any barbecue hot ashes then let them cool down and then
01:37don't put them on the same day for a day or so once they've cooled down
01:40completely once you're confident then put them into our general waste bins which
01:46can then be obviously disposed off. As we're searching through the loading the
01:51material onto the into the equipment potential that can be squashed
01:55underneath the bucket there's already charging there against sparks and it's
01:58creating fires for us again if anything gets through into a bailers because
02:02we crush cans and and the paper and that if we've got a battery in there and
02:06it's squashed again we've got a potential fire it's an absolute nightmare. As we
02:10know there's a ban on disposable weights nobody should be selling them people
02:15have got our residents have got any disposable weights or anything with
02:19lithium batteries in their possessions which come for the end of life then
02:23the advice is take it back to the shops we will be able to dispose of them or to
02:28our household recycling centers which then can be disposed of safely. We started
02:34here at midnight last night and we must have already got at least a thousand vapes
02:39that's been disposed of in the wrong receptacle and that we've actually got out
02:42today. Every one of those again is a potential fire. Just put the items in
02:48there that are supposed to go into the green bin if you're not sure about it
02:52take it down to your house always recycling site there's advisors on there
02:55that can then you know put it into the into the right receptacles.