BUSINESS
39recyclinginternational.com | January/February | 2020
EXTINGUISH? OR SHRED TO
ZERO?
The question is how can these fires be
prevented from becoming so big and
uncontrollable? Recyclers, helped by
fire experts, prove to be pretty inven-
tive. Increasingly, temperature-sensing
cameras trained on scrap piles are
being installed at yards. Tubes capa-
ble of delivering high-pressure water
are being placed within scrap piles.
Another option is the use of fire sup-
pressants and, if possible, a daily prac-
tice of ‘shredding to zero’ rather than
allowing scrap piles to grow too big.
Jeff Harris, managing director of
Macaulay Metals, in Wellington, New
Zealand has its own, simple emergen-
cy plan: ‘We have placed water tanks
on our yards. In the event of a fire
starting, the grapple from the material
handler is used to get the water onto
the pile,’ he tells Recycling
International.
INSURANCE HEADACHES
Meanwhile recyclers like Stephan Karle
from Germany are forced to invest
large sums in technology and equip-
ment to detect fires in the earliest
stage. ‘The problem is that insurance
companies no longer cover your oper-
ations if you have not taken enough of
these safety measures,’ he says.
Apart from the fire and the loss of
scrap, lithium batteries igniting ‘can
kill your business in the long term
because of all the costly investment in
precautionary measures we are forced
to take,’ says the manager of
Regelink.
Steel recyclers body BDSV is urging
authorities and governments to pro-
duce stricter regulations to drive the
separate collection of batteries to pre-
vent them ending up in piles of metal
scrap. It is also working with other
industry associations to improve label-
ling and to make it easier to remove
batteries from electronic and electrical
equipment.
Fotobijschrift
KADERKOP
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