Two fires a day: Why the waste sector cannot keep being the last line of defence

Lithium-ion batteries are now the fastest growing fire risk our industry faces, and the problem has arrived far faster than the policy framework meant to contain it.

The scale of the problem

Material Focus, working with the National Fire Chiefs Council, estimates more than 1,200 battery related fires a year in UK bin lorries and waste facilities, a 71% rise on the previous year. The Environmental Services Association (ESA), of which SUEZ is a member, puts the annual cost at over £1 billion, up from the £158 million estimated by Eunomia and the ESA in 2021.

Behind that sits the volume problem. Material Focus reports around 1.6 billion batteries binned in a single year, roughly 3,000 a minute, with over a billion hidden inside devices people do not think of as "batteries" at all: toothbrushes, earbuds, novelty greetings cards, cheap FastTech gadgets binned within weeks of purchase.

And vapes. Despite the single use ban of June 2025, more than six million vapes and pods are still discarded weekly, and they remain the single most identifiable cause in publicly reported waste fires. The market moved to rechargeables; behaviour did not. Devices are still binned with significant charge remaining, which makes them more dangerous, not less, when they meet a compaction blade. Insurer QBE recorded 1,760 lithium-ion fires attended by UK fire services in 2025, one every five hours and a 147% rise in three years.

The reality on the ground

Across our operations we deal with around two active fires every day. Not hotspots on a thermal camera, but real fires requiring intervention by our people or the fire and rescue service.

We monitor continuously, invest in detection and suppression, run pre-acceptance and load inspection protocols, manage stack sizes and housekeeping to WISH standards, and have built new training so teams can respond safely. That work is why the majority, but not all, never become the blaze that closes a road or puts a plume over a community.

But we are being relied on to solve this at the very end of the chain, far further down the line than it should ever have reached. Every one of those fires began with a design decision, a purchasing decision and a disposal decision we played no part in. No investment at our gate substitutes for keeping batteries out of the waste stream, and the better we get at containing the symptoms, the easier it becomes for everyone upstream to ignore the cause.

What can Government do to drive change?

Who should bear the cost and risk of fire from improperly disposed batteries? Not frontline operators and taxpayers. It should be those placing batteries on the market. Our three key asks are:

A deposit return scheme for vapes. A £5 deposit has been floated as the figure that would actually change behaviour. Today there is no financial reason to walk a dead vape back to a shop and every reason to bin it. A deposit reverses that incentive without relying on anyone knowing what is inside the device.

Battery and WEEE reform with teeth. Defra’s reform of the Waste Batteries Regulations, with consultation expected during 2026, is the moment to get producer obligations, collection targets and design requirements right. Vapes now sit as a distinct WEEE category with their own targets, but targets only matter if the infrastructure and awareness exist to meet them.

How do we bring the user into the picture?

Some people genuinely do not know the item they are binning contains a lithium cell, or the consequences of binning it if they do. Many who do cannot name where to take it. A smaller group know exactly what they are doing and bin it anyway, because the alternative is inconvenient and there is no consequence. Convenience beats conscience almost every time, which is why communication isn’t a strong enough tool by itself.

That doesn’t mean that we should stop communicating though. SUEZ supports national campaigns, including the ESA’s Take Charge and Stop Battery Fires, as well as its own media campaigns around these issues, alongside working with its customers and partners to share guidance and raise awareness on battery fires and where to recycle them appropriately. We have shared this guidance through our own channels on hidden batteries and where to recycle them. Campaigns help to keep raising awareness and reminding people who may already be aware but have become complacent.

In the meantime: Earlier detection, faster suppression

We are working with our insurers and suppression suppliers on remote monitoring and remotely operated suppression, allowing a developing fire to be attacked in the incipient stage from a position of safety rather than waiting for a conventional system to activate.

Sprinklers and deluge remain essential and nothing replaces them, but they are designed to control an established fire, not to intervene at the smouldering stage. In a waste pile, that gap is the difference between a shovel and quarantine job and a total loss. Pre-action detection using thermal, gas and video analytics, coupled with remotely aimed monitors, lets us act inside it, which matters when thermal runaway burns differently, takes longer to tackle and can demand many times more water.

Fire safety standards in operation. WISH’s WASTE 28 remains our reference point for stack sizing, separation distances, water supply, firewater containment and emergency planning, and is clear that suppression is one element of a system rather than a solution on its own. It sits alongside our Environment Agency fire prevention plans, covering ignition prevention, early detection, limiting spread between stacks, extinguishing within four hours where required and firewater containment. Aligning technology investment with both is what makes it defensible to our regulator and insurers, not just effective on the day .

Zero2Five20: Our operating model for the first 20 minutes

Technology only works if people know what to do around it, so we built our own framework, Zero2Five20. The clock runs once: a single 20-minute window that includes the two- and five-minute elements, while support activities happen at the same time instead of one after another.

Zero: Zero ignitions. The only acceptable target is zero ignitions. This means focusing on lobbying, consumer awareness, pre-acceptance and inspection protocols, load screening, hot load procedures, housekeeping and stack discipline.

2 minutes: Detect and escalate. Two minutes from first sign to alarm raised, control room informed and emergency services called where appropriate. Escalation is never a judgement call to be deferred. If in doubt, escalate.

5 minutes: Tackle. Where it is safe to do so, and only where it is safe, trained colleagues have up to five minutes to intervene at the earliest stage using site suppression, extinguishers or plant. After that, the answer is withdrawal.

20 minutes: Total response time. The full window, within which everything is made ready for attending crews: access secured, plant and utilities isolated, water supplies and hydrants confirmed, personnel accounted for, firewater drainage protected and a briefing prepared for the incident commander. By 20 minutes, the site should be handed over ready for the fire service to go straight to work.

The message to our people

We have built dedicated training around the framework, but one message sits above all of it: no one is expected to fight a fire.

If a colleague does not feel comfortable intervening, they do not intervene. No consequence, no expectation, no judgement. Withdrawal is always a correct decision. We train equally hard on when enough is enough. If the fire is growing rather than shrinking, if smoke is thickening or changing colour, if you cannot see your escape route, if you are reaching for a second extinguisher, if there is any sign of thermal runaway, or if the five minutes are up, you stop, withdraw, account for your people and let the professionals work.

Property and plant are insured. Our people are not replaceable. Any version of Zero2Five20 that puts a colleague at risk is a failure of it, not a success.

Where this goes next

We will keep pressing government for a vape deposit return scheme and battery regulations fit for the products actually on sale. We will keep working with insurers, suppliers and the WISH community on suppression that acts earlier, as well as keep training our teams to respond safely and to know when to stop. Two fires a day is what the current system produces. Our people should not be the ones making that number survivable.