Nature charities joined fire chiefs in calling for a ban on disposable barbecues yesterday, branding them a menace to the environment.
Keep Britain Tidy called for a national ban on sales of single-use barbecues, which can cost as little as £2, while the Woodland Trust urged campers and day trippers to leave them at home.
The Fire Brigade has already backed a ban after they were implicated in blazes on tinder-dry grasslands around the capital.
The disposable devices are among the main causes of the many grass and open land fires recorded around the UK this summer, harming the environment and putting pressure on stretched emergency services.
Keep Britain Tidy called for a national ban on sales of single-use barbecues, which can cost as little as £2, while the Woodland Trust urged campers and day trippers to leave them at home
Around 4 per cent of serious accidental fires are ‘robustly linked' to barbecue use, Home Office figures show.

Retailers including Waitrose and Aldi have already stopped stocking disposable barbecues.
They can also cause injury as the heat continues for many hours after the devices are put out. Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy, revealed her son Sam, then 18, badly burnt his foot five years ago on a throwaway barbecue which had been buried on a sandy beach.
She said: ‘When it comes to litter, there is nothing that gets me angrier than a disposable barbecue abandoned on a beach or in our precious green spaces.
‘Some of the wildfires that we have seen this summer were started by abandoned single-use barbecues.'
The disposable devices are among the main causes of the many grass and open land fires recorded around the UK this summer, harming the environment and putting pressure on stretched emergency services
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