A discarded e-bike battery triggered a garbage truck fire in Surry Hills on Wednesday morning, bringing the dangers of improper battery disposal right to our doorstep — and renewing urgent calls for locals to think before they bin.
The fire broke out on Wemyss Lane at around 8.40am as the truck was making its rounds. Crews from Fire and Rescue NSW’s (FRNSW) City of Sydney station arrived quickly, spotted smoke billowing from the vehicle, and directed the driver to tip the entire burning load onto the street. Firefighters then doused the flames and sifted through the debris, finding the culprit: an e-bike battery that had been tossed out with ordinary household rubbish. Nobody was hurt.
It was the third garbage truck fire recorded across NSW in just six days. A blaze on the previous Friday brought significant traffic chaos to the M5 Motorway at Milperra, burning so fiercely that investigators were unable to determine its cause. A day before the Surry Hills incident, crews also dealt with a burning truck in Kirribilli.
Those three incidents are part of a much larger pattern. There have been 40 garbage truck fires across NSW so far this year, with most believed to have started with lithium-ion batteries discarded in household rubbish bins. In 2025, the full-year toll stood at 62.
The mechanics behind these fires are well understood. When a garbage truck’s compactor crushes its load, any lithium-ion batteries mixed in can be punctured or deformed, setting off what specialists call thermal runaway — a self-sustaining chemical reaction that generates its own heat, oxygen and fuel. Once ignited, these fires are notoriously hard to put out, and they spread rapidly through surrounding waste.
FRNSW Acting Assistant Commissioner for Community Safety, Greg Rankin, stressed that the risk extends well beyond e-bikes. Smartphones, laptops, tablets, cordless vacuum cleaners, electric toothbrushes and vapes all contain lithium-ion batteries that pose the same threat if they end up compacted in a truck.
NSW EPA Director Sam Lewis echoed that message, pointing out that what might seem like a trivial convenience — tossing a spent battery in the household bin — can have serious consequences further down the line for truck drivers and the broader community.
FRNSW and the NSW Environment Protection Authority are jointly running the Never Bin A Battery campaign, which directs residents to free drop-off points where batteries can be disposed of safely. Batteries can be dropped off at many supermarkets, Bunnings stores and local Community Recycling Centres around Sydney. Residents are advised to cover the terminals of batteries with sticky tape before dropping them off at collection points.
For Surry Hills residents, the message is straightforward: check what’s inside your gadgets before they go in the bin, and take batteries to an authorised drop-off instead.
More information on safe lithium-ion battery disposal is available at the FRNSW website and the NSW EPA’s Never Bin A Battery page.
Published 12-August-2026
