Plea to separate household waste after fire

Firefighters in Shropshire have stressed the importance of separating household waste, after a battery pack started a fire at a recycling centre.

Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service said it was called to Papersort UK on Maesbury Road Industrial Estate, Oswestry, at 07:36 BST on Thursday.

One bale of compacted paper was smouldering inside a machine, while there was also a small fire in the base of the equipment, it said.

It was discovered that there was a lithium battery pack among the paper that had been damaged during the compaction process.

The fire service said the incident demonstrated the importance of making sure waste was properly separated when taken to recycling centres and domestic bins.

It added that paper waste brought to the site was screened and prepared for compaction by a separate, unrelated company.

Thanks to cameras at the site that use image analytics to detect the infra-red characteristics of a fire, the incident was caught early.

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