At about 8.40am on 12 August 2026, a garbage truck working Wemyss Lane in Surry Hills started pouring smoke. Fire and Rescue NSW crews from the City of Sydney station spotted it, had the driver tip the burning load onto the street, and found the cause sitting in the rubbish: a discarded e-bike battery.
Nobody was hurt, but the numbers around it are the story. New South Wales has recorded 40 garbage truck fires so far in 2026. For all of 2025, the total was 62. On the current run rate the state will clear last year's figure with months to spare, and lithium-ion batteries thrown into household bins are the main suspect.
Three trucks in six days
The Surry Hills fire was the third garbage truck blaze in NSW inside a week. One burned on the M5 at Milperra on the Friday, causing major traffic delays, with the cause undetermined because the fire was too intense to leave evidence. Another burned at Kirribilli on the Monday.
The mechanism is the same every time. A lithium cell that has been crushed, punctured or damaged inside a compactor can go into thermal runaway, a self-feeding chemical reaction that generates its own heat and oxygen and is very hard to put out. Inside a sealed truck full of dry paper and plastic, that is a fire before the driver knows anything is wrong.
It is not only e-bike batteries. Phones, vapes, cordless power tools and laptops all carry cells that behave the same way. E-bike packs are simply the biggest ones most households own, so when one goes in a bin it brings the most energy to the party.
What to do with an old e-bike battery
- Never put a battery, a battery pack or a device with a built-in battery into any kerbside bin, including the recycling bin
- Use a free battery drop-off point: Fire and Rescue NSW and the NSW EPA run the Never Bin A Battery campaign, which lists authorised locations
- Tape the terminals on loose cells before you transport them, so nothing can short in the boot of the car
- If a pack is swollen, punctured, has been in a crash or smells odd, stop using it and stop charging it, and treat it as damaged goods when you drop it off
For riders, the practical takeaway is boring and effective. Buy a certified battery and matched charger, charge it where you can see it and not across an exit path, and when it reaches the end of its life, drive it to a drop-off point instead of dropping it in the bin. The alternative is a truck fire in someone's street.
Sources
Incident detail, fire counts and the quoted advice are from the Fire and Rescue NSW media release of 12 August 2026.