Amid growing concerns about discarded lithium-ion batteries causing nearly 10,000 fires in Australia, environment ministers from across the states met Friday, and agreed to take urgent action against the alarming menace.
Each year, Australia produces 3,300 tonnes of lithium-ion battery, News.com reported. A report from Pragmatic Research, funded by waste and recycling bodies, put battery-related fires between 10,000 and 12,000 annually, ABC News reported.
Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association chief executive Gayle Sloan, representing more than 400 businesses, said, “If we don’t act on this, we’re going to continue to see facilities and trucks burn, we’re going to end up potentially with genuine injuries or significant injuries on our workers, and, dare I say, a death, which is what we’re trying to avoid.”
In addition, the waste and recycling sector called for safe dropping points for lithium-ion batteries, so that it was not added with general waste.
“In the interim, we need governments in each state to fund collection points to take them now out of our stream, because there’s no point telling consumers don’t put it in the bin if you can’t tell them where to put them,” Sloan said.
Federal Minister Tanya Plibersek, who chaired the meeting in Sydney, said the government will act urgently on the product stewardship reforms, support the waste and recycling industry and introduce incentives for safe disposal of waste batteries.
A key part of Australia’s Waste Policy, product stewardship is a scheme that reduces environmental impact of a product’s packaging during its life cycle and after its disposal.
“When batteries are not stored or disposed of properly, they can threaten lives and cause extensive damage to properties and waste infrastructure,” NSW Minister for the Environment Penny Sharpe said, adding that Fire and Rescue NSW attended more than 270 lithium-ion battery fires in 2023, which was the official number and that the figure could be more.
Sloan also told ABC’s 7.30 that she urged the government to expand the B-Cycle scheme. At present, the national battery recycling scheme does not accept all batteries such as embedded batteries like vapes, digital pregnancy tests and flashing concert wristbands.
CSIRO principal research scientist Adam Best said lithium-ion batteries hold a lot of energy making them prone to strong reaction when they are damaged.
“When those batteries are either in a fault or they’ve been abused or damaged, we can release that electrical energy as chemical energy, so what we see is fire and potentially explosion,” Best added.
