Safe battery and BBQ disposal warning issued in Leeds

National World - LocalTV

Following three recent incidents in refuse collection vehicles, Leeds residents are being reminded about the dangers of binning batteries and hot ash from BBQs.

Transcript

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.

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