A battery recycling plant has geared up to protect itself from flooding.

Sortbat, based in the city of Tienen in Belgium, sorts out batteries before they are recycled and has invested in an amazing sandless sandbag called a FloodSax.

This means Sortbat is prepared to deal with flooding immediately either through internal plumbing problems and leaks at the plant or from floodwater caused by torrential rain.

The FloodSax were supplied to Sortbat by  Adel Oueslati who runs Aquasorb in Belgium a partner company of Environmental Defence Systems based in Yorkshire, England, which devised and manufactures FloodSax.

Sortbat now sorts 2.5 million kg of batteries a year so it’s a huge operation but that can rise to 5m kg a year.

FloodSax are transformed from being as light as a pillowcase to become better than traditional sandbags in around three minutes.

To do that, all you need to do is add water and watch them miraculously expand.

The semi-porous inner liner within FloodSax contains a special gelling polymer  which absorbs the water to become taut.

They can be expanded in water in a bath, sink, bucket, hosepipe or even the floodwater itself. Once the water is in there, it stays there and the bags act just like sandbags to keep floods at bay. They are designed so they mould into doorways to keep floodwater out.

Before they are activated FloodSax are incredibly lightweight, amazingly weighing just 7 ounces yet once expanded they are strong enough to stop a powerful torrent of water in its tracks.

They can be deployed outside as a barrier to prevent floodwater from getting into homes or business.

And they can be used inside to soak up leaks and spills in hard to reach places such as beneath faulty boilers, radiators and pipes.

The key thing is they save in every sense of the word.