A GARBAGE truck driver was forced to dump a full load of recycling after it caught alight inside the truck on Thursday morning.
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The quick action of the driver pulling off the road and dumping the rubbish has been commended by firefighters, who said the whole truck would have gone up in flames without his evasive action.
Station officer with Fire and Rescue NSW, Guy Dover, said the driver called 000 after smelling something burning in the truck just before 10.30am.
“He had just done a pick-up in Bentinck Street and saw what he thought was dust coming out of the garbage truck.
“He then smelt something burning, and managed to pull off the road into the parking area of George Park and dump the load before it spread to the truck.”
Station officer Dover said early investigations suggest there were batteries in the recycling which when compressed put the positive and negative ends into contact and produced enough heat to create a fire.
He said the message from Thursday’s fire was for people to take note about what can and cannot be placed in recycling bins.
Station officer Dover said the driver acted very quickly to dump the load and save the truck.
“The rubbish was well alight when we arrived,” he said, adding two crews responded to the fire.
Once the blaze was extinguished, a contractor, using a CAT front loader attended George Park to remove the rubbish from the car park.
While the recycling truck belonged to an independent contractor, Bathurst Regional Council put out a statement about what can and cannot be recycled.
“There are many items that can be recycled, but not everything can be placed into recycling bins,” the spokesperson said.
“Council has collection points at the civic centre front counter for household batteries as well as a dedicated area for all batteries at the CRC (Community Recycling Centre) at the WMC (Waste Management Centre).
The spokesperson said household batteries include; 6V, D, C, AA, AAA, 9V and button batteries.
“These can all be placed in the containers along with batteries from electrical and electronic equipment including mobile phones, laptops and power tools.”
Batteries which are collected by council are sent off for reprocessing in order to recover components such as nickel, zinc, steel and cadmium. Cadmium can be re-used by battery manufacturers while recovered metals can be on-sold for reuse.
