Getting fired up

Every day, on average, there has been a fire at a waste management or recycling plant somewhere in the UK according to the Environmental Agency’s own figures. The situation has not been addressed over the past 10 years. Indeed, while the number of fires has remained more or less the same, the scale and media profile has grown.

Waste management and recycling fires cost a great deal to extinguish once they take hold. For instance a recent recycling fire in the Midlands required the Environment Agency to spend 200,000 of resource just to clean up canal pollution. Factor in the services of fire crews and local business disruption and the cost for a major fire, perhaps lasting two or three weeks is considerable. What is more, some sites call upon the services of the emergency services, the Environment Agency and other bodies on more than one occasion in the course of a year.

Recycling and waste management by its nature can be vulnerable to fire: large amounts of combustible material and multiple sources of ignition on site. The industry cannot eliminate the risk entirely although fire prevention and detection measures can substantially reduce serious incidents. Yet, while it has been other agencies and businesses that have picked up the tab, it looks like a number of changes, some of which have only happened over the past few weeks, will mean that the cost will start to tip more towards the recycling and waste management sector.

London Fire Brigade recently announced, for instance, that it will fine businesses for automatic false alarms, which cost the capital 37 million a year. Increasingly fire services want visual verification of a fire before committing their resources, which are already under pressure from cutbacks.

Insurance

With particular reference to waste management and recycling sites is the issue of insurance. One experienced insurance brokerage, Buckland Harvester, estimates that premiums have increased for the industry by up to 300% in the last five years and that only a handful of insurance companies now offer policies.

Waste management and recycling firms also face new penalties. On July 1 new sentencing guidelines are being introduced for the industry. Companies in the sector that carelessly pollute can be subject to fines of 400,000 for smaller businesses, 3 million for those with a turnover of more than 10 million. There is no reason to believe that environmental damage caused by fire will not be acted upon.

Let’s return to the fire in the Midlands, the resulting environmental damage and the impact on local businesses, the prior and subsequent breaches of regulations and failure to reasonably co-operate with the Environmental Agency and the Fire and Rescue Services resulted in a custodial sentence for a director of the business.

The majority of waste management and recycling companies would not countenance such behaviour. Yet it does show that those in the industry that do not take fire risk and its consequences seriously will now face more than financial penalties. In this case there was also a fine of more than 15,000 that accompanied the prison sentence.

Waste management and recycling industry fires are a costly business. The tab cannot be expected to be picked up from under pressure services and agencies. We are seeing, even in the space of a few weeks, a shift towards putting more pressure on the industry’s offenders. There are fire detection and prevention options available to mitigate against risk and the potential penalties. It is up to the industry to decide to try to resolve the situation or risk new measures outside their control addressing the problem for them.