Using VR to Train Waste and Recycling Teams for Lithium Battery Fires and Emergency Response

Relevant case studies

Blog post: 08/09/2026 1:22 pm

Author: Spark Team

Using VR to Train Waste and Recycling Teams for Lithium Battery Fires and Emergency Response

Fire is one of the most difficult hazards for a waste organisation to reproduce realistically during training. Employees need to recognise developing incidents and understand emergency procedures, yet deliberately creating realistic fires inside waste-processing environments is neither practical nor desirable.

Virtual Reality offers another approach. A bespoke simulation can reproduce the visual, audible and operational conditions surrounding a waste fire while allowing employees to make decisions without exposure to heat, smoke, moving machinery or combustion products.

The Changing Fire Risk in Waste Streams

Waste-processing facilities handle highly variable material streams. Fires may develop in storage areas, conveyors, compactors, vehicles or processing equipment, and sorting systems themselves can play a role in reducing the likelihood and frequency of fires. HSE specifically includes fire prevention considerations within its guidance on sorting and processing waste.

Increasing volumes of electrical products and battery-powered devices add another challenge because damaged or incorrectly discarded batteries can enter waste streams unexpectedly.

The training question becomes: how can staff practise recognising and responding to an escalating incident without creating that incident physically?

Creating Realistic Fire Scenarios in VR

A Spark VR scenario could reproduce a client's materials recovery facility, transfer station, recycling centre or waste-storage building.

The trainee might initially encounter apparently normal operations. Gradually, subtle indicators could appear:

• an unusual smell reported by another operator;

• smoke emerging from a waste pile;

• heat or alarm indications;

• a suspected battery within incoming material;

• a conveyor fire;

• an alarm activation; or

• loss of visibility as the simulated event develops.

The trainee must decide what to do based on the organisation's SOP rather than following a predetermined animation.

Training Decision-Making Under Pressure

This is where VR can provide significantly more value than simply watching a safety film.

The user participates.

Depending on the organisation's procedure, the scenario could require the trainee to raise an alarm, stop machinery, withdraw from an area, communicate with colleagues, contact emergency responders or move towards a nominated muster point.

Incorrect decisions can alter the scenario. The simulation might demonstrate how delaying an alarm changes conditions or how approaching the wrong area reduces available escape time.

No employee is physically endangered, yet the relationship between action and consequence becomes memorable.

Practising Scenarios That Cannot Easily Be Staged

Fire exercises are valuable but necessarily controlled. VR can complement them with incidents that would be difficult to reproduce physically, including:

• rapidly escalating waste-bunker fires;

• smoke obscuring normal routes;

• fire near process machinery;

• multiple alarms;

• blocked access routes;

• night-shift incidents;

• contractor involvement;

• communications failures; and

• situations requiring evacuation rather than intervention.

The same physical training room can therefore become dozens of operational environments.

Building Site-Specific SOPs Into the Experience

Spark only develops bespoke solutions. This is particularly important for emergency training because procedures vary considerably between sites.

The virtual facility can reproduce actual:

• alarm points;

• control rooms;

• fire doors;

• escape routes;

• assembly points;

• equipment locations;

• conveyor systems;

• waste bunkers;

• vehicle routes; and

• site-specific emergency procedures.

The objective is not to teach an abstract version of fire safety. It is to help employees understand what their organisation expects them to do at their site.

AR for Prevention and Inspection

Augmented Reality can complement emergency VR by supporting routine inspections before incidents occur.

A maintenance engineer could scan an asset and see an AR inspection checklist positioned alongside the real equipment. Fire-detection components, thermal-monitoring points, emergency stops or isolation equipment could be highlighted visually.

AR could also confirm the equipment identifier and present the latest approved maintenance procedure rather than relying on somebody finding the right manual or drawing.

Repeating Rare Events

A major advantage of simulation is repetition.

A facility might operate for years without a particular employee experiencing a serious fire. Operationally, that is clearly desirable. From a training perspective, however, it means competence for rare events can fade.

VR allows the same emergency to be revisited periodically and can introduce variations so employees cannot simply memorise the answers.

A scenario can also be used for supervisors, contractors, maintenance teams and control-room operators, with different objectives for each role.

Creating Measurable Emergency Competence

Training data could record:

• time taken to recognise the hazard;

• whether the alarm was raised correctly;

• selected evacuation route;

• prohibited actions;

• communications decisions;

• SOP compliance; and

• scenario completion.

Managers can therefore identify recurring weaknesses and focus subsequent training on genuine behaviour rather than assumptions.

Conclusion: Rehearse the Unrehearsable

Waste fires demonstrate one of VR's clearest industrial advantages: the ability to practise a serious event without creating the serious event.

For waste and recycling organisations, bespoke VR can transform fire and battery-incident procedures from documents employees read into situations employees experience and solve. AR can reinforce preventative inspection and equipment identification during everyday operations.

Together, they can strengthen preparedness, reduce mistakes and help employees understand how seemingly small decisions affect an escalating incident.

Would you like to recreate your waste facility and emergency procedures as an immersive training simulation? Contact Spark to discuss a bespoke VR or AR solution.

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