Lithium-ion batteries have been responsible for more than 1,000 fires during the past year in Australia. Industry and government want regulation and action.
It's busy inside Sydney's second-largest recycling facility, operated by Re.Group, which processes more than 300 kilograms of material per minute.
"What we can't deal with is hazardous items that are creating a risk — that are going to burst into flames, that are going to hurt one of our workers, that are going to hurt our equipment." Workers keep an eye on what's coming through the facility, but small items are hard to spot. Mr Lamb quickly picks out three disposable vapes from a pile of glass – the same objects he believes may be responsible for the Canberra fire."You look at a pile of 60 tonnes of material on the floor, you know that there's a handful of batteries in there somewhere, you know that there's going to be dozens of vapes in that pile somewhere," he said.
"We know when we put just a 10-cent refund on bottles and cans, we saw a massive increase in the number of those that were returned through proper collection points … Why can't we add other materials into that sort of scheme?"two women were believed to be the state's first lithium-ion battery fire-related deaths.
"We're in a time of energy transition and our predecessors had to deal with piped natural gas coming into properties, they had to deal with the introduction of petrol-powered engines and fuel storage and electricity being introduced in the properties," Mr Fewtrell said.
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