Bio-fuels industrial leak – once is an accident, twice is just careless!

As reported by the Peterborough Telegraph, an enforcement notice was issued against a local bio-fuel company just a few months before a second major chemical spill incident took place, and three people were injured by sulphuric acid.

The Pure Fuels plant in Old Great North Road, Stibbington, reported the spill. The company had previously been given an enforcement notice by the HSE after an explosion in November 2018 which injured two people. Police believe the 2018 incident was a methanol explosion, people living nearby were advised to stay indoors, and the incident was attended by six fire crews, a hazardous area response team and the ambulance service.

Apparently the HSE had ‘demanded action’ after the business “failed to assess the risks to your employees and others not in your employment from the processing of bio diesel and glycerine and other flammable substances on your site, which could result in the production of a flammable atmosphere and explosion.”

Pure Fuels had fully complied by the end of January 2019, leaving the HSE puzzled about why a second incident happened at the same facility. They’re busy investigating.

It looks like the police were called by the fire service at about 6pm, and all three emergency services turned up at the scene. The extent of the injuries is still to be confirmed, but four fire crews and four ambulances attended the acid spill near Nene Valley Railway’s Wansford Station on Old Great North Road. The emergency services found a small amount of acid and made the area safe.

Pure Fuels makes bio-fuels from waste cooking oils into fuel for vehicles and electricity generation. With two incidents in just a few months, it looks like they could do with help from someone like us.

Industrial fire prevention – The new end-of-life lithium ion battery initiative

Waste fires can have a devastating impact on business and their surroundings, having disastrous environmental impacts and leading to disruption for local people. And discarded lithium ion batteries are a serious cause of waste fires. But not for much longer.

As reported by Balebid, waste operators and fire chiefs are busy figuring out a better way to handle and process used lithium ion batteries, which are the cause of a high percentage of fires at recycling sites.

At the moment Lithium ion batteries are incredibly dangerous when at the end of their life, especially when broken. So far 2019 has seen a number of nasty recycling centre fires, which cause environmental damage as well as big financial losses for the companies who have to deal with the issue.

The new project is called SAFeRWEEE and will see householders separating small WEEE – Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment – into three separate types before disposal: things that don’t contain batteries, batteries removed from things, and things from which you can’t remove the batteries. This means householders will have to remove batteries where possible before throwing battery-run products away, which means the fire risk should fall and the batteries will be more likely to be disposed of safely.

If the test succeeds, the new project will be rolled out across three recycling centres this summer, and the results will be available at the end of 2019. If it has the desired effect, it’ll go national. As Richard McKinlay, Head of Circular Economy at the Axion Group, said, “Not only should this reduce the risk of fire but also could lead to recovery of higher value material through improved householder engagement at waste and recycling centres.”

The big polluter pays… more than ever

As reported by The Wire and Yahoo news, the public has a clear interest in seeing criminal pollution punished. And while the courts have often been seen as too lenient, things have changed since 2014. It looks like enormous environment fines have become increasingly common in Britain, more than doubling on average in the past five years.

March 2019 saw Severn Trent Water fined half a million pounds for a massive raw sewage spill in a Birmingham park. In 2014, the Court of Appeal handed a quarter of a million pound fine to Thames Water after an illegal discharge of untreated sewage into a stream in North Wessex. United Utilities was fined £750,000 after a pumping failure in Cumbria. In 2016, Thames Water was fined £1m for a sewage spill, and in 2017 they were in trouble again for sending around 1.4 billion litres of raw sewage into the Thames. They were fined £20m.

Huge fines like this reveal a sea change in the way courts treat environmental crimes committed by big businesses. It happened thanks to the introduction of very specific sentencing guidelines for environmental offences in 2014, and the change is having a dramatic impact on fines.

Can environmental criminals expect a harder time for their environmental crimes? If you’re a large utility, yes. But the Sentencing Council has shown no hike in the fines given to polluting individuals, which means they’re still sometimes getting away lightly. And while the fines are bigger, fewer cases are actually getting to court. Add to that the fact that the £20m handed to Thames Water represents less than two weeks’ profits for the company and you can see it’s hardly a deterrent. On the other hand stricter penalties are also encouraging polluters to report accidental criminal environmental harm to the Environment Agency, then enter into an enforcement undertaking, stop their illegal activities, work to prevent them happening again, and make amends.

Avoid fines – We’ll help you prevent industrial water pollution

The last thing your business needs is an enormous fine, something that can ruin your reputation as well as leave your finances in tatters. Call us in to explore your needs and we’ll recommend the best ways to avoid stiff environmental penalties from water pollution.