Guidance aims to control fire risk at waste management facilities

Safety & Health Practitioner

The Waste Industry Safety & Health (WISH) Forum, along with the Chief Fires Officers Association (CFOA), the Environment Agency, HSE and other waste industry bodies, is developing guidance to control the risk of fires at waste management facilities.

 

With a number of high-profile fires at waste sites recently in the news, the industry is looking to take the initiative by helping to set out a responsible approach to the storage of combustible waste materials on site. 

 

The fundamental premise is that it is no longer acceptable to stockpile vast quantities of waste materials. The draft guidance, along with general advice of good housekeeping to reduce fire risk, sets out thresholds for safe stack sizes and safe separation distances between stacks. These thresholds, which apply to a range of the most commonly stored waste materials, have been derived from existing guidance and insurance industry standards. 

 

Flexibility has been built into the draft guidance, and the specified stack sizes and separation distances should be applied in the absence of anything other than the most basic fire control precautions on site. 

 

Where operators can demonstrate that more sophisticated fire control measures have been deployed, or where a scientific approach to testing the combustion properties of waste stored on site has been adopted, then the guidance allows for a more bespoke approach to the calculation of stack sizes and separation distances. 

 

The draft WISH guidance is available for consultation until 25 July. Any comment, or queries, should be directed to Stephen Freeland, who is collating them on behalf of the WISH Forum at [email protected]