GARLAND, Texas \u2014 The City of Garland is reminding residents across Texas to properly dispose of household batteries after recent fires linked to improperly discarded batteries have created hazards for sanitation workers.<\/p>\n
Officials say batteries, especially lithium-ion batteries found in everyday items like toys, vape pens and small electronics, should never be thrown into the trash or recycling bin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really trying to do our best to educate our residents to make sure that they\u2019re not disposing of these batteries in our garbage streams or recycling streams,\u201d said Oswaldo Rodriguez with the City of Garland\u2019s sanitation department.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez says lithium-ion batteries are especially dangerous because they can spark when they\u2019re crushed during the collection and processing process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey burn very hot, and when they burn hot, they tend to catch a lot of things around them on fire pretty quickly,\u201d Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
The warning comes after a fire broke out Friday at the City of Garland\u2019s transfer station. Rodriguez says incidents like that are often preventable if batteries are kept out of the waste and recycling stream.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best way residents can help us is by not disposing of those batteries in our waste or recycling streams,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Residents can safely recycle batteries at designated collection sites, including the Dallas County Home Chemical Collection Center. Additional battery recycling locations can be found through Battery Network\u2019s\u00a0online locator<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GARLAND, Texas \u2014 The City of Garland is reminding residents across Texas to properly dispose of household batteries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1061,102,223,1571,1225,27,29,28,1569],"class_list":["post-390740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-app-public-safety","tag-dallas","tag-news","tag-nicolette-perdomo","tag-public-safety","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}