2024 was “a yr of progress,” in response to fire-suppression firm Fire Rover, however that is not a completely good factor.

The corporate, which gives fire detection and suppression systems based mostly on thermal and optical imaging, smoke analytics, and human verification, releases annual stories on waste and recycling facility fires within the US and Canada to pick trade and media. In 2024, Fireplace Rover, based mostly on its hearth identifications, noticed 2,910 incidents, a 60 p.c improve from the 1,809 in 2023, and greater than double the 1,409 fires confirmed in 2022.

Publicly reported hearth incidents at waste and recycling services additionally hit 398, a brand new excessive since Fireplace Rover started compiling its report eight years in the past, when that quantity was nearer to 275.

Plenty of issues might trigger fires within the waste stream, lengthy earlier than lithium-ion batteries turned widespread : “Fireworks, pool chemical compounds, scorching (barbecue) briquettes,” writes Ryan Fogelman, CEO of Fireplace Rover, in an e mail to Ars. However lithium-ion batteries pose a rising downside, because the variety of gadgets with batteries will increase, client schooling and disposal selections stay restricted, and batteries stay a really easy-to-miss, troublesome occupant of the waste stream.

All batteries that make it into waste streams are doubtlessly hazardous, as they’ve so some ways of being set off: puncturing, vibration, overheating, short-circuiting, crushing, inner cell failure, overcharging, or inherent manufacturing flaws, amongst others. Fireplace Rover’s report notes that the media usually portrays batteries as “spontaneously” catching hearth. In actuality, the very nature of waste dealing with makes it nearly unattainable to make sure that no battery will face hazards in dealing with, the report notes. Tiny batteries might be packed into probably the most disposable of things—even paper marketing materials handed out at conferences.

Fogelman estimates, based mostly on his expertise and a few assumptions, that about half of the fires he is monitoring originate with batteries. Roughly $2.5 billion of loss to services and infrastructure got here from fires final yr, divided between conventional hazards and batteries, he writes.