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Speaker 1: In the first two weeks of this year, batteries have

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Speaker 1: caused five different fires in rubbish and recycling trucks, and

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Speaker 1: that is just in Auckland. The Auckland recycling facility has

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Speaker 1: one or two small fires every week. Justin Hayes is

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Speaker 1: with Auckland Council. She's the general manager of Waste Solutions

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Speaker 1: and she's with us this afternoon, Good afternoon, justing, good afternoon.

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Speaker 1: This is all to do with lithium iron batteries, are

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Speaker 1: we sure of that?

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Speaker 2: We can't attribute them the fires directly, but what we

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Speaker 2: do know is that they're highly explosive material and there's

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Speaker 2: many more of them in our waste stream than ever before,

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Speaker 2: and we are experiencing many more fires. So it's a

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Speaker 2: very very likely cause of this issue.

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Speaker 1: How many, So five fire truck fires in the space

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Speaker 1: of a couple of weeks since we started the year,

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Speaker 1: that's nuts.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we've actually had nine in January now, so that

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Speaker 2: that was in the first two weeks and we've had

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Speaker 2: another fource. So yes, that's our highest number in one month.

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Speaker 1: What happens when there's a fire? Does the driver see

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Speaker 1: smoke and then pull over and call someone? Is there

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Speaker 1: an explosion.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes they are aware with something like smoke and kind

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Speaker 2: of can take more precaution. Sometimes there's an explosion. Sometimes

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Speaker 2: they're literally seeing the footage of flames in the truck,

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Speaker 2: And unfortunately, the only way of extinguishing the fire at

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Speaker 2: the moment is to drive to a safe place where

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Speaker 2: they can tip the rubbish out onto the ground so

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Speaker 2: that emergency services can put out the fire. And the

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Speaker 2: problem with the fire is it requires huge volumes of

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Speaker 2: water to put out, so then that creates a whole

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Speaker 2: load more waste and environmental spoil, which then requires even

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Speaker 2: more clean up. So yeah, it's a big problem. And

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Speaker 2: of course that relies on the truck being able to

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Speaker 2: get somewhere safe to offloat.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and that would just presumably be the closest place.

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Speaker 1: So then you end up then with a bunch of

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Speaker 1: rubbish on the side of the road that I guess

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Speaker 1: you guys are going to come and clean up again,

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Speaker 1: that's right.

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Speaker 2: And unfortunately many of these fires occur in our recycling trucks,

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Speaker 2: so actually that all of that recycling material then becomes

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Speaker 2: our landfill rather than recyclable, right, So it's a bit

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Speaker 2: of a double.

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Speaker 1: Whaarme what do you know what the main culport is

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Speaker 1: because there's you know, there's the whole ev batteries, there's

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Speaker 1: the scooters, there's the vapes. Do you know, do you

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Speaker 1: have an idea of which of those is the worst offender?

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Speaker 2: No, we don't really. Unfortunately the problem is the increasing

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Speaker 2: numbers of all of those things, so vapes, laptop batteries, phones,

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Speaker 2: electronic toothbrushes, raises, toys. You know, there's an an endless

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Speaker 2: number of things now that have batteries to operate them,

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Speaker 2: and that's the problem. So it's difficult to estimate the

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Speaker 2: total number of these batteries that are in circulation. So

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Speaker 2: it's actually hard to even estimate the scale of this risk.

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Speaker 1: Interesting. Just thanks so much for your time. That's Justine

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Speaker 1: haes or thus Us, the general manager of Waste Solutions

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Speaker 1: for Auckland Council. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive,

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