2 days Ago By Kevin Purdy
2024 was "a year of growth," according to fire-suppression company Fire Rover , but that's not an entirely good thing. The company, which offers fire detection and suppression systems based on thermal and optical imaging, smoke analytics, and human verification, releases annual reports on waste and recycling facility fires in the US and Canada to select industry and media. In 2024, Fire Rover, based on its fire identifications, saw 2,910 incidents, a 60 percent increase from the 1,809 in 2023, and more than double the 1,409 fires confirmed in 2022.
Publicly reported fire incidents at waste and recycling facilities also hit 398, a new high since Fire Rover began compiling its report eight years ago, when that number was closer to 275. Lots of things could cause fires in the waste stream, long before lithium-ion batteries became common : "Fireworks, pool chemicals, hot (barbecue) briquettes," writes Ryan Fogelman, CEO of Fire Rover, in an email to Ars. But lithium-ion batteries pose a growing problem, as the number of devices with batteries increases, consumer education and disposal choices remain limited, and batteries remain a very easy-to-miss, troublesome occupant of the waste stream.
All batteries that make it into waste streams are potentially hazardous, as they have so many ways of being set off: puncturing, vibration, overheating, short-circuiting, crushing, internal cell failure, overcharging, or inherent manufacturing flaws, among others. Fire Rover's report notes that the media often portrays batteries as "spontaneously" catching fire. In reality, the very nature of waste handling makes it almost impossible to ensure that no battery will face hazards in handling, the report notes.
Tiny batteries can be packed into the most disposable of items—even paper marketing materials handed out at conferences . Fogelman estimates, based on his experience and some assumptions, that about half of the fires he's tracking originate with batteries. Roughly $2.
5 billion of loss to facilities and infrastructure came from fires last year, divided between traditional hazards and batteries, he writes. Ars previously covered a likely lithium-ion caused fire in a suburban Chicago truck that spread to the truck's compressed natural gas (CNG) tanks, causing an explosion that injured firefighters and damaged nearby homes. Fire Rover also adds a February 2025 fire in a Camden, New Jersey scrapyard , caused by a battery "wrongly delivered to EMR and undetectably concealed within scrap metal," according to the company, requiring more than 15 fire companies' response and damaging the site and putting nearby residents out of their homes.
The vape effect Batteries as a whole are a growing concern, but there's a reason Fire Rover's report has an image of an exploding electronic vape pen on its cover, with the superimposed message "We are at war 2024." Fogelman sees a notable shift in publicly reported fire data—not from Fire Rover's own detection, but from news and other reports and sources—from the 2016–2021 period to 2022–2024. Something is causing this shift, and Fogelman's most likely culprit is e-cigarettes, vapes, and other battery-powered nicotine devices.
Credit: Fire Rover/Ryan Fogelman Vapes are perhaps the most effective single thing the e-waste and recycling industries could target. If everybody knew to dispose of vapes properly, at sites that can safely handle them, there could be a reduction in risk. But that safe, evenly distributed vape disposal network does not exist.
As previously noted, you can make a rather powerful e-bike from the vapes left behind at a festival in the UK. In the US, the EPA directs people to bring their e-cigarettes to household hazardous waste (HHW) sites or pick-up events, which are "typically" free. "Not only are their batteries being improperly discarded in waste and recycling bins, but the vape industry has done the bare minimum to invest in the technology needed to address the 1.
2 billion vapes entering our waste and recycling streams annually," the report states..
