Recycling centres warn of explosive gas canisters

Gas canisters explode when they are put under pressure

As camping season gets underway, a recycling centre is reminding people of the danger of putting gas canisters in their recycling.

This year alone, more than 1,000 potential fires from gas canisters have been avoided at Suez recycling facilities in Taunton and Evercreech.

Recycling crews have to manually check recycling ahead of the automated sorting process to avoid explosive incidents.

Senior production manager Phillip De Wavrin said: "With any sort of impact or compression, these canisters can explode, so they really are quite dangerous."

The small canisters, mainly used for camping gas stoves, are often mistakenly put in the kerbside recycling ‘Bright Blue Bag’.

The bag can be used to recycle empty aerosol bottles like hair spray or deodorant, but should not be used to dispose of gas canisters.

Gas canisters are almost all gas which is stored at a high pressure.

Mr De Wavrin added: "If they get to the baler, there's a lot of pressure put on them. If it's in the middle of the bale, it burns out.

"On average, we pull out five to 10 gas cans a day, which is quite a lot. And in the summer time, it dramatically increases.

"Fires are really destructive for the whole industry," he added.

"If there was a fire here that took out the baler, the impact to everyone would be really big - where are we going to put the waste? It's not as simple as going somewhere else."

Gas canisters must be taken a local household recycling site, Mr De Wavrin added.

And it is not just gas canisters that can pose a risk for collection crews, other items including batteries and barbeques are potential fire starters.

Over the past year, 10 fires have started at SUEZ’s material recovery facilities or within trucks.

The fires have broken out when hazardous materials including large and household batteries as well as gas canisters have mistakenly gone through the baling process.

Quick responding crews have prevented injury or serious damage occurring.

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