Glen Eira City Council said a recycling truck caught fire due to the incorrect disposal of a vacuum cleaner with a lithium-ion battery on March 10.
The City of Maribyrnong had a rubbish truck damaged in a blaze in Footscray on February 28, less than a month after another garbage truck fire on the same road: Moreland Street.
Daniel Freer, the director of places and spaces at the City of Boroondara Council in Melbourne’s inner east, said lithium-ion batteries were part of the modern world, but posed a challenge for rubbish collectors.
“We’ve seen an increase in the number of fires or ‘hot loads’ over the last few years,” Freer said.
“These fires can be dangerous for our staff, damage our waste trucks, and each fire can cost ratepayers many thousands of dollars.”
Fischer said tipping smouldering rubbish onto a street posed other risks, but could at least be cleaned up and prevented fires from engulfing trucks.
He pointed to power tools, vacuum cleaners and e-scooters as examples of devices that use lithium-ion batteries. Some could combust while charging, while others got caught and compressed in rubbish truck pick-ups.
“That is when that lithium-ion battery casing can be broken, punctured or stressed, and then that results in that thermal runaway event,” Fischer said.
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Last year, 50 residents of a Carlton student accommodation building had to be evacuated when a lithium-ion battery in a power bank exploded in a bedroom. The power bank was being used to charge a mobile phone.
A Sunbury home was destroyed last year when an unplugged lithium-ion pool cleaner battery exploded on the back verandah.
The waste and recycling industry in Australia estimates that lithium batteries and battery-powered products caused between 10,000 and 12,000 fires each year in trucks and at rubbish facilities.
Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia chief executive Gayle Sloan said the problem was getting worse, given the proliferation of products like vapes with inbuilt batteries.
“We have a phenomenal amount of products placed on the market at present that are powered by batteries that have no end-of-life solutions,” Sloan said.
“People don’t know where to dispose of them, and that’s why we’re seeing the waste facility fires.”
Sloan urged the Victorian government to follow the NSW, which introduced a bill to state parliament in the past week that, if passed, would force suppliers to take greater responsibility for where their battery-powered products end up.
Currently, a national scheme for battery waste exists for separated batteries. However, Sloan said there was not one for larger or embedded batteries.
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A state government spokesperson said Victoria had advocated for reform alongside NSW at federal meetings.
The spokesperson said Victorians could safely dispose loose lithium batteries at more than 1000 sites, including at Bunnings and Coles stores and many council transfer stations.
“E-waste has been banned from landfill since 2019, which makes it illegal to put any item that has a plug, battery or power cord in household rubbish or landfill,” the spokesperson said.
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