How one battery can be a fire risk for an entire housing block

The cause was simple. When lithium batteries are crushed inside a waste truck, they can ignite and set fire to surrounding materials and other batteries in the load. A single battery is enough to cause a serious incident.

Across the UK, waste truck and recycling site fires have increased by more than 70% in a single year, according to the National Fire Chiefs Council. In Tower Hamlets, we recorded 25 fires in the past 18 months alone, all caused by batteries that had been placed in household waste.

“Many residents rely on communal bins and shared collection points, which means one incorrectly disposed battery can affect hundreds of households”

The risks go beyond safety alone. When a refuse truck catches fire, a collection route can be delayed by up to 48 hours. That has significant implications for inner-city areas like Tower Hamlets, where waste services operate on tight schedules with high volumes.

For residents living in blocks, safe battery disposal is particularly important because communal waste systems mean individual choices can have wider consequences.

Tower Hamlets is the most densely populated local authority in the country, and around 87% of our homes are flats. Many residents rely on communal bins and shared collection points, which means one incorrectly disposed battery can affect hundreds of households.

Two years ago, we worked with the London Fire Brigade to launch the Charge Safe campaign, which raised awareness of the dangers of lithium battery fires linked to e-bikes and e-scooters. That campaign helped reduce the number of fires in Tower Hamlets caused by these vehicles from around two a month to one a month.

We used that experience to develop our new Dispose Safe campaign, which focuses on the risks of putting battery-powered items into household waste and explains how residents can dispose of them safely. The campaign includes a short animation that shows how fires start and how they can be prevented.

The campaign is particularly relevant for residents in flats and housing estates, where communal waste systems mean individual actions can have wider consequences. Clear information and practical advice can make a real difference in helping people understand what to do.

“If safe disposal is inconvenient, the risk is that items will end up in household waste instead”

Having said that, there is an elephant in the room that needs to be addressed. At present, responsibility largely falls on residents to take batteries and small electrical items to recycling points, usually in supermarkets or local authority recycling centres. While many people want to do the right thing, changing their behaviour in the long term depends on convenience.

It is not always realistic to expect residents to travel across a borough to dispose of a small number of batteries or a broken toy. If safe disposal is inconvenient, the risk is that items will end up in household waste instead.

Therefore, more support is needed from the UK government to improve local recycling infrastructure so that safe disposal becomes the easy option. In the meantime, we have made the campaign assets available free of charge to other local authorities and housing providers so that consistent messages can reach as many residents as possible.

Ashraf Ali, director of public realm, London Borough of Tower Hamlets