No one was injured and the truck itself was not damaged, allowing it to return to service later that day.<\/p>\n
Fire and Emergency said a single appliance from the Rotorua station was dispatched at 11.43am after receiving reports of a rubbish truck carrying a \u201csmoking load\u201d. <\/p>\n
Once at the landfill, firefighters extinguished about a square metre of smouldering material released from the truck.<\/p>\n
An investigation later identified a box of discarded batteries, including a laptop battery, as the culprit. <\/p>\n
A Rotorua bin truck. Photo \/ Stephen Parker<\/p>\n
Lithium-based batteries, commonly found in laptops, mobile phones, power tools and vaping devices, are increasingly responsible for fires in waste and recycling systems nationwide. <\/p>\n
When crushed or punctured during compaction inside a rubbish truck or at a transfer station, the batteries can short-circuit and ignite, sometimes explosively.<\/p>\n
Council officials said there had been no other bin-truck fires in Rotorua over the past year but acknowledged a growing national trend. <\/p>\n
Similar incidents across Auckland last year were linked to lithium batteries, including a large blaze on the North Shore in April that prompted residents to remain indoors because of toxic smoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re using this as an opportunity to remind the community that batteries and battery-embedded devices must not be placed in kerbside rubbish or recycling bins,\u201d a council spokesperson said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey pose a significant fire risk to workers, equipment and the wider public.\u201d<\/p>\n
A fire at a waste station in Auckland in April 2025. Photo \/ Matt Martell<\/p>\n
Rotorua councillor Fisher Wang shared images of the burned batteries on social media and praised the driver\u2019s quick response. <\/p>\n
He urged residents to take greater care with battery disposal.<\/p>\n
A Fire and Emergency spokesperson reiterated that recycling was the safest option and warned against stockpiling discarded batteries at home. <\/p>\n
If a battery or device began to smoke or catch fire, people should evacuate immediately, close doors if it was safe to do so, and call emergency services from a secure location, they said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBattery vapour and smoke are highly toxic and flammable.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone exposed to battery fluids, debris, smoke or flames should seek urgent medical attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lithium batteries can be recycled at the Rotorua Recycling Centre, alongside standard household alkaline batteries, using designated collection bins. <\/p>\n
Damaged or leaking batteries, however, are considered hazardous waste and require specialist handling.<\/p>\n
Mathew Nash is a Local Democracy Reporting journalist based at the Rotorua Daily Post. He has previously written for SunLive, been a regular contributor to RNZ and was a football reporter in the UK for eight years.<\/p>\n
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No one was injured and the truck itself was not damaged, allowing it to return to service later…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1443,74,38144,6081,138,12631,165966,165967,2079,7572,27892,37564,671,2944,14633,111,139,69,12064,30248,1327,38019,8207,1961,2195,23857,1455,33210,25361,686],"class_list":{"0":"post-302747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-about","9":"tag-after","10":"tag-batteries","11":"tag-battery","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-dangers","14":"tag-discarding","15":"tag-disposed","16":"tag-fire","17":"tag-firefighters","18":"tag-household","19":"tag-improperly","20":"tag-incident","21":"tag-inside","22":"tag-lithium","23":"tag-new-zealand","24":"tag-newzealand","25":"tag-nz","26":"tag-prompted","27":"tag-renewed","28":"tag-rotorua","29":"tag-rubbish","30":"tag-sparks","31":"tag-this","32":"tag-traced","33":"tag-truck","34":"tag-warning","35":"tag-warnings","36":"tag-waste","37":"tag-week"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}