Recently published data has shown that a fire takes place at a recycling or waste management plant almost every day on average.
Following a question in Parliament from Derek Twigg MP on what estimate Defra has on the number of fires at recycling plants since 2001, Environment Minister Richard Benyon revealed the Environment Agency statistics for fires at waste management sites between 2001 and 2012.
While 2001 was the best year recorded with 246 fires, 2011 was the worst with 425 fires investigated by the Environment Agency.
The average for the 12 years was 335 fires per year, which means that statistically a fire takes place every 0.92 days at an English recycling or waste management facility.
This is including both regulated and unregulated sites where the cause of pollution is clearly identified as fire. It is also possible that some fires may have led to multiple pollution incidents, which would have led to duplication of data.
Recently, the sector has suffered a number of high profile fires, with the blaze at a Jayplas facility in Brimingham the most prominent.
The full breakdown of incidents per year is:
2001: 246
2002: 343
2003: 398
2004: 337
2005: 346
2006: 379
2007: 290
2008: 275
2009: 337
2010: 345
2011: 425
2012: 302