Waste and recycling operators are heading into another year of elevated fire risk as lithium-ion batteries from electronics and disposable vapes continue to slip into waste streams, according to fire-tracking consultant Ryan Fogelman.
He said the sector is still dealing with what he calls the vape effect and argued that the next phase of the response has to involve tobacco and vaping companies directly. Fogelman, vice president of fire protection at Fire Rover, has been compiling and publishing data on publicly reported waste and recycling facility fires in the US and Canada since 2016.
His reports show that incident counts have climbed sharply in recent years as battery-powered devices proliferate and as disposable vapes move from ashtrays and pockets into bins, trucks and tipping floors. In a recent fire report, he wrote that the average number of facility fires in the current four-year span is noticeably higher than in the previous six years and that vapes are a major contributor to that increase.
The problem with bans
Speaking with E-Scrap News, Fogelman said he does not believe bans on single-use vapes will reverse the trend.
“I do not believe bans work,” he said. “We look at the UK and know the bans do not work.” He pointed to data from British recycling companies that continue to find very large numbers of outlawed vapes in their systems months after national restrictions took effect.
Instead of relying on bans, Fogelman is publicly urging tobacco and vaping companies to help pay for the battery side of the problem. In a December column structured as an open letter to US tobacco executives, he argued that the industry should step into extended producer responsibility programs for lithium-ion cells and help fund new collection options rather than focus solely on health liabilities.
“Everybody who is causing any part of the problem needs to be part of the solution,” he said. He framed the request as a fire safety issue rather than a referendum on nicotine or addiction. “I do not even care about that,” he said during the interview. “Take that away. We are not coming at you for that.”
A three-part hazard
Fogelman said vapes illustrate how multiple hazards can converge in a single device with no clear end-of-life path. “If you look at a vape, there are three pieces of it,” he said. “One is your biohazard, because it has been in your mouth. Then it is a hazardous material issue, whether it is THC or the Nic juice, and then it is a battery issue because it is electronic.” He said those overlapping risks make it difficult for retailers and community programs to accept used vapes even when they want to expand battery collection.
His proposed starting point is a design rule requiring removable batteries in vapes and similar devices. He said that a simple change would separate the battery from the cartridge, allowing consumers to treat the cell like any other household battery.
“This would all be pretty much a lot more clear if you take the vape problem and you take the batteries out,” he said. “Now you are not trying to educate to skip the bin. You are saying skip the bin with the battery out.”
Even with design changes, he said, there is no way to educate consumers out of the problem without far more convenient drop-off options. “We need more uber-local drop-off locations for all batteries,” he said. He argued that cost should not fall on municipal taxpayers or waste companies and said it belongs with manufacturers through extended producer responsibility programs and related funding tools.
A long road ahead
Fogelman has estimated that fires linked to discarded batteries are costing the US and Canadian waste and recycling sector about $2.5 billion a year, a figure he describes as intentionally conservative.
“We are talking about two and a half billion dollars a year and just to the waste and recycling industry,” he said. “That is not global.” He said the financial toll comes on top of risks to workers, nearby residents and responding fire departments.
Alongside his policy push, Fogelman is investing time and money in education. He is collaborating with educator and Scrap University Kids leader Jessica “Scuba Jess” Alexanderson on a children’s book called Supercharged that focuses on lithium-ion battery safety, with support from the National Waste and Recycling Association (NWRA), the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) and other partners.
The book is written so that children follow a story, while parents and teachers receive additional guidance and links to battery drop-off locations.
“You have a storyline for the child and then a storyline that is focused on the adult and the teacher,” Fogelman said. He said the team hopes to place copies in classrooms across the US and Canada through donations from foundations and industry.
Fogelman said he remains realistic about how long behavior change will take, particularly for current adult vape users. He believes education, better product design and new collection infrastructure will have to move together. For now, he said, the underlying risk is not easing and the vape effect has not peaked.
“I am optimistic that 10 years ago people knew nothing,” he said, but Fogelman added that “the numbers are not going down. They are only going up, unless you get 20 million people to stop smoking tomorrow.”
