IOWA CITY, Iowa — An eastern Iowa landfill is blaming a string of fires on batteries. So far in 2025, five fires have ignited at the Iowa City Landfill, all caused by batteries.
Don’t just toss your batteries out
You might not know it, but batteries aren’t something you can just throw in the trash when you’re done with them. They don’t go in your recycling bin either.
They may be small, but batteries hold a large amount of energy. When a battery overheats or gets damaged in any way, it has the potential to start a fire or an explosion. This is why batteries should never be placed in your recycling bin or household trash.
“In terms of a landfill environment, so we think of if someone were to throw a battery improperly in the trash, and then we think of that ending up either in a compacting garbage truck or in a landfill where there’s heavy equipment running over the garbage to compact it and to move it into place. Those are opportunities for that battery to then get damaged, and when it gets damaged we’ve got that potential for a fire,” Recycling Coordinator for the City of Iowa City, Jane Wilch said…