Disposable e-cigarettes were responsible for a sharp increase in recycling plant fires last year, raising the risk of large fires releasing toxic fumes and poll...
Disposable e-cigarettes were responsible for a sharp increase in recycling plant fires last year, raising the risk of large fires releasing toxic fumes and polluting the air.
Recycling companies are now dealing with so many e-cigarettes that they are struggling to insure their facilities. Some companies are now using artificial intelligence to detect e-cigarettes and their lithium-ion batteries, and to install thermal imaging cameras and automatic foam ejectors.
Hazardous materials handled by waste and recycling plants mean they could start fires similar to the Bradford tire fire in 2020, which burned for a week, forced the closure of 20 schools and demanded that every school in West Yorkshire Firefighters are all involved.
Around 1.3 million disposable e-cigarettes are now thrown away every week in the UK - a staggering increase since they were first sold in 2019 - and many end up on the roadside or in general rubbish. They contain lithium-ion batteries that can easily catch fire if ruptured, and some vapers have suffered life-altering injuries after their batteries exploded.
Research by Material Focus, a nonprofit that recycles electronics, found more than 700 fires in garbage trucks and recycling centers were started by batteries that were dumped in general trash.
Grundon recycles around 80,000 tonnes of household and municipal waste a year, and there has been an increase in the number of disposable e-cigarettes collected by street sweepers, whose round brushes typically pick up leaves and stones.
"They're sold as a single-use product, so people just throw them on the floor," says Owen George, Grundon's department manager. "About a year ago we didn't see anything, but now they're everywhere. We might pick 100 to 150 in an eight-hour shift. They're just people we catch."
What they don't catch ends up in the non-recyclable waste stream, along with items like Pringles tins, plastic wrappers and single-use coffee cups. These are chopped up and packed into packages, a process that can open up lithium-ion batteries, which can then easily catch fire. In the past year alone, Grundon has seen three or four fires at one location.
"We've managed to weed them out, but the frequency is really increasing," George said. "It's not just us — it's affecting everyone in the industry."
Grundon has installed around £250,000 worth of fire detection equipment in each of its facilities. "We installed thermal imaging cameras and in some places, we installed automatic cannons that can locate the source of the fire and put it out with water and foam."
Insurers have become reluctant to cover the waste industry due to fire risk, premiums are growing and expensive fire safety systems are now required. Artificial intelligence is another option.
Around 70% of UK recycling facilities now use artificial intelligence developed by Greyparrot.
Mikela Druckman, CEO of Greyparrot, said: We have a box with a camera in it, we will take continuous images of the waste stream, and then use AI to detect and analyze these images.
The system can identify 67 types of material and then sort them—steel can be picked up magnetically, while lighter PET plastic bottles can be blown away with a puff of air.
"We are working on several projects, mainly in Austria, but now also in the UK, where we are identifying batteries in the waste stream," Druckmann said.
Justin Guest, co-founder of Payback Technologies' Archipelago Eco, said banning vaping would be a blunt weapon, adding: "It won't solve the problem because it's not just vaping - many E-cigarettes contain batteries now a thing. People get stuff and throw it away all the time.
“There will be some other consumer boom that will come along and these materials will always go into the waste stream. So you need safeguards, you need technology to address that.”
Around 138 million disposable e-cigarettes are now sold in the UK each year, containing enough lithium to power around 1,200 electric car batteries.
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