Fire Surge: Why Are We Seeing A 48% Increase In Waste & Recycling Facility Fires In The First Eight Months Of 2018?
Ryan Fogelman, J.D., MBA
Partner @ Fire Rover: Revolutionizing Industrial Fire Safety; COfounder/Partner @ COhatch: Strengthening Communities & Improving Lives;
Fire Surge: Why Are We Seeing A 48% Increase In Waste & Recycling Facility Fires In The First Eight Months Of 2018?
Why Are We Seeing A Spike In Fires In 2018?
This is a question that I do not have the answer to. I have been reporting the Waste & Recycling Facility Fires since Feb 2016 and I am witnessing the monthly data unfold with the rest of you. March, April and May's fires are the highest months on record. March 2018 could merely be an anomaly. But then come April, May and June. May had the highest number of fires in any month since I began reporting facility fires and then June matched May's. But my gut is telling me that there are a number of factors that are contributing to this increase, be it an onslaught of lithium-ion batteries in our waste stream, the increased material stock in our facilities due to China's recycling restrictions, warmer/drier than usual weather from previous years or an increase in the public's awareness of these fire incidents. Along with my thoughts on what factors are causing the fire incidents we are facing, I will also discuss the things we can do to alleviate the problem, including basic housekeeping, public education/respect and of course the use of fire protection technology.
The Scope of the Problem:
In the past 12 months, we have seen 377 unique reported waste and recycling facility fire incidents in the US & Canada. When you factor in my extremely conservative assumptions that we are under-reporting waste and recycling facility fires by about 5:1, (Source: https://www.linkedin.com/post/edit/how-many-recycling-fires-have-occurred-us-canada-within-ryan-fogelman) we are looking at a reasonable number of fire incidents in the US and Canada at 1800+.
In the same time period (Sept 2016-Aug 2017) we encountered 271 waste and recycling facility fire incidents in the US and Canada. Using the Environmental Research & Educations Foundations data, EREF’s Municipal Solid Waste In The US, published in 2016: In 2013 there were 3,913 recycling facilities and 81 WtE facilities. That would equate to 40% of Waste & Recycling Facilities have had a "Fire Incident" in the past 12 months, increasing from the 30% I had shared at WasteExpo in 2017. I realize this number might seem high to some, but when put in the context of Rumpke's reporting, which is highlighted below, of 12 fires in 2017 reported in just two of their facilities, you can see the numbers start to add up quickly.
I am typically asked the question if we can segment the increase in fire incidents by the material processed by the facilities. In the chart above, I outline the percent changes in fire incidents by facility by material processed using yr/yr ytd numbers. To keep perspective, I have also included the percent of the total each material processed that make up the total fire incidents using data dating back to Feb 2016, so almost two and a half years. It is interesting to see the increases by material processed, but worth noting that both waste and metal fires still make up the biggest number of incidents.
What’s Causing This Trend?
In Waste & Recycling, we know we have numerous spark-developing dangers, like lithium-ion batteries, loaders scratching concrete, shredder sparks, and hot loads possibly caused by mishandled charcoal, fireworks, fertilizers and more. We have seen a number of trends starting to form which include an increase in fires incidents during the summer's warmer/dryer months as well as holiday spikes due to the increased amount of trash being processes at the end of each calendar year.
1) Lithium-ion - If you look at the increase in lithium-ion batteries in our waste stream, it is the perfect storm. According to Cameron Perks, a consultant for Industrial Minerals, “forecast demand for lithium-ion batteries is expected to increase up to seven-fold by 2024.” How this increase correlates to waste and recycling facilities fires is something that we honestly do not know, but what we do know is, that at the very minimum, there is an anecdotal effect. Although I can typically pinpoint the type of material that was being processed from each fire incident, finding the exact cause is more of an art than a science. If a MRF or transfer station has a major fire incident, it is hard to pin down the exact source. It can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. See an example of a mini-explosion we caught with our thermal cameras on a tip floor.
Check out this live footage of a lithium-ion battery fire incident. This trailer was unknowingly filled with containers of lithium-ion batteries that were supposed to be recycled but instead were sent through the normal waste stream. The truck was minutes away from unknowingly dumping its load of mislabeled lithium-ion batteries onto this transfer station's tipping floor. Luckily the driver noticed the load was on fire before that occurred which resulted in minimal damage to the facility.
Had the load been unloaded on the tip floor, I will leave the outcome up to your imagination, but let's just say that you are watching the best case scenario.
Here is a video that Ecomaine shared at their MRF of a lithium-ion battery fire in December. The video was sped up, but this is a perfect storm of the dangers that these batteries are causing when improperly placed into waste and recycling bins.
What I can say for sure is that this issue is not going away anytime soon. Lithium-ion battery technology is being used to drive the IOT. They are in our toys, phones, computers, gadgets and more. According to Call2Recycle the manufactures of lithium-ion batteries are required to set up drop off locations for consumers which are available across the US. There is over twenty drop off locations in my city alone that include convenient places we all go to like Home Depots, Lowe's, and Sears. We need consumers to start to utilize these services as opposed to just throwing their used batteries and electronics in the waste stream, leaving our waste processors on the hook to deal with their harmful effects.
2) Heat / Dryness - We have experienced an increase in fires during the summer and hot months in 2016 and 2017. I go into this further in an article I published last summer that outlined some of the potential causes for the summer spikes. Although only causational, global warming certainly isn’t helping the situation. According to an NOAA report, “Last year was the third hottest on record in the United States, with an average temperature of 54.6 degrees Fahrenheit—2.6 F above average. Only 2012 and 2016 were warmer than 2017[...] The five hottest years on record in the country have been in the last decade, based on 123 years of record-keeping. The record heat means that every year since 1997 has been warmer than average in the United States. And in 2017, every state had a warmer-than-average year, and 32 recorded one of their 10 hottest years on record.
As one can imagine, there is not a ton of consolidated data on March's weather yet, according to Samantha Harrington's article published in Yale's Climate Connections, "During the 2017-18 winter, Arctic temperatures were well above average, and the region experienced record-long warm spells. Then, in March 2018 alone, the eastern U.S. was slammed by four successive nor’easters. The storms brought high winds to Taranto in Raleigh and dumped snow on Boston. Several factors helped create those nor’easters. For one, the area of the Atlantic off the southern and mid-coast of the U.S. is fed by waters from the Gulf of Mexico, which saw record warm temperatures throughout last year. Warmer ocean water can strengthen nor’easters by increasing the difference of the air temperatures over the water and land.
We know from the data that drier and hotter weather has a negative effect on the number of fires our facilities face. No matter what part of the country you are in during Q1 of this year, be it wildfires in California or Nor'easters in the East, our weather patterns this spring were definitely chaotic and led to drier and hotter temperatures than normal near the major population centers of the US.
3) China's Recycling Restrictions - Another trend I am keeping my eye on is China’s recycling restrictions. The issue is that as the traditional market for recyclable materials is drying up and the supply of recyclables is staying steadfast. Due to lack of a market, we are experiencing an increase in the amount of material inventory across the globe. Steve Frank, of Pioneer Recycling in Oregon, owns two plants that collect and sort 220,000 tons of recyclable materials each year. A majority of was until recently exported to China. “My inventory is out of control,” he said. Time and the data will continue to tell the story in 2018. "In Washington, some communities are diverting recyclables to landfills to prevent public health and fire code issues," said Brad Lovaas, WRRA Executive Director. "It's not safe to store large quantities of recyclables inside for fire code reasons and not feasible to store them outside due to our wet climate."
"There are indications that some Chinese paper mills are already short of stock and there may be some row-back on recyclable high-quality paper...Clancy, chief executive of Repak recycling company, believes the Chinese market is in effect closed due to unachievable standards on contamination levels." So in effect, this story can play out in a number of ways: 1) We clean up our act and start producing a cleaner product with less contamination; 2) China lessens its restrictions in order to meet their demand; 3) We find other outlets to divert these materials from our landfills.
Based on my data, it seems that the paper inventory cause is a bit overblown. When I compared the first four months of 2018 by type of facility, paper recycling was only up a couple of percentages. compared with other like electronics and metals that can be attributed more to lithium-ion fires. Waste typically incurs at a higher rate as the summer months and holiday season appear. All good data that we need to continue to revisit.
4) Awareness - When I first started tracking the number of Waste & Recycling Facilities, it was not because I wanted to motivate the industry into purchasing our Fire Rover solution. In the early days, every executive that I spoke with asked me to document the true scope of the problem. There was a lack of transparency to the fire issues the waste and recycling industry had been facing. Were their operations to blame? Were their competitors facing the same issues? Having a legal background, I started to do research to find the scope of the problem and was amazed that there was very little data out there, especially in the US & Canada. With that being said, I believe that a number of us, including people like Chris Cloney that publishes Mydustexplosionresearch.com, companies like Rumpke that have publicly shared their issues with fires, David Biderman from SWANA and our Waste & Recycling Industry publications have brought the fire issues our waste and recycling facilities are facing to the forefront of the industry's conversations. As awareness is increased there is more reporting from the news outlets on these issues. Some might say this is a stretch, but I have seen articles written on incidents when there were never articles written before. “All problems become smaller when you confront them instead of dodging them.” – William F. Halsey
What can we do to solve the problem?
1) Housekeeping - It is always easier to stop a fire before one starts. Basic housekeeping is one of the best ways to protect your operations. Brent Shows, Director of Recycling of Advanced Disposal came up with these basic housekeeping bullets for protecting MRF's and transfer stations specifically which include: Keep the trash moving!; Stay in compliance with regulatory authority; Do not park equipment near a potential heat source; Implement a preplacement plan with local fire department; If available, verify and maintain existing automated suppression systems; If facility is not protected source an additional layer of protection; Schedule fire watch with local security company if necessary; Develop an action plan to follow should an event occur to limit confusion and facilitate information flow; Clean the facility at regular intervals to keep the dust build up to a minimum;
2) Education / Respect - There is one thing that I know for sure, we could stop almost all waste and recycling fires if the end customer (yes, that is all of us) understood and respectfully disposed of their trash properly. In the past, major waste operators sharing their fire incidents publicly was a major no-no, but there are companies like Rumpke and Ecomanie that are taking the opposite approach, sharing their fire stories, video and data in an effort to curb poor recycling practices by consumers.
I did an informal study a while back about why there is confusion about what can be recycled: Is The Public Confusion Around Recycling Causing Fires?." "“The public tends to drop a lot of things off that we can’t take. And it’s not cost-effective for us to spend a lot of time sorting it out,” said Mike Wolf, the office manager at Pacific Steel & Recycling in Missoula, Mont." My view is that we need to take two steps back in order to take one step forward. A good colleague of mine said that the only thing that we should be recycling is non-printed paper, #1 and #2 plastics, metals and cardboard. Brent Bell, Vice President of Recycling Operations from Waste Management was recently quoted as saying, "it all boils down to recycling the right items the right way. This can be done by following a few simple rules: 1. Recycle all empty bottles, cans, paper and cardboard 2. Keep food and liquids out of your recycling 3. Keep plastic bags out of your recycling.
This "back to basics" approach might be in contrast to people that believe “If we start telling the public to throw things away instead of recycling, we’re never going to get that material collected later," but in the end this approach would leave us with a simple, yet effective national recycling program that is profitable and can be the basis for a clean and safe waste and recycling industry that adheres to the regulations that would make our material the cleanest and most marketable in the world.
3) Technology - From a technological perspective there a couple of things that I believe are certain. The traditional fire protection processes the industry has in place are not working. I am personally a huge fan of sprinkler systems, but only for office and residential use. When you are trying to protect outdoor operations or warehouse facilities with 30ft-60ft ceilings that have open dock doors most of the year, there is a tough time getting enough radiant heat to the sprinklers to set them off. In waste and recycling facilities, sprinkler systems are there to allow your employees enough time to get out safely and potentially protect the structure of the building. With proactive technology in waste and recycling facilities, our goal needs to be to detach and suppress a fire incident as early in the process as possible. Alternatives have been presented to the industry in the past that claim to do this, but they had issues with reliability, false alarms, clean up/set up and potential dangers to employees.
With our Fire Rover technology, we have moved the focus from containment of a major fire incident to early detection and cooling of a fire incident. Our solution is the only one on the market today that seamlessly integrates military grade thermal detection (not IR, flame or smoke detection), remote human verification and onsite remote targeted application of our cooling wetting agent. Our Fire Rover solution is currently installed in almost 100 waste and recycling facilities across the US. We have put out over 78 fires in the past 12 months at the Clients sites we protect. We are protecting hazards that include tipping floors, in-feeds, equipment, rubber feedstock, scrap metal, hazard materials and more. We typically catch most fires during the incipient, pre-incipient and smoldering stages, and we have not had one fire incident within a protected area that has grown to a Major Fire Incipient stage. In fact, most of our "saves" have little to no cleanup required and our Clients were able to continue their operations after the event. Additionally, our technology has built-in fire watch so there is no need to worry about a reoccurrence. Here is how it works:
Conclusion
So what actually caused an increased spike in fires during the first five months of 2018? As you can see there are a number of "direct" and "indirect" factors that come into play. I am sure I am missing a number of factors that others would think played a role and would be happy to discuss/learn about these if you would like to share. What we do know is there is a significant hurdle that we face as an Industry in these fire incidents. Fortunately, these hurdles are not insurmountable as there are a number of things we can do in an effort to alleviate these fire problems. I can promise that I will continue to track and publish these fire incidents as well as trends and share the progress we are making as an industry in our efforts to alleviate the fire problems we have been facing for decades.
Our Fire Rover solution is the only one on the market today that seamlessly integrates military grade thermal detection (not IR, flame or smoke detection), remote human verification and onsite remote targeted application of our cooling wetting agent. We are is currently installed in over 100 waste and recycling facilities across the US and have suppressed over 100 fires at our Clients facility’s within just the past 12 months.
Our solution is a living, breathing layer of protection meant to complement and work within all of the diligence and hard work that safety and operations teams have developed, maintained and continuously improve upon. If you are interested in learning more feel free to message me on LinkedIn or by email at rfogelman@firerover.com.
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Commercial Manager at Sweeep Kuusakoski Ltd
6yWe are seeing far more lithium batteries in all waste stream than ever before. These are small incendiary devices when accidentally shredded or crushed. For example: http://abc7ny.com/traffic/fdny-lithium-ion-battery-caused-fire-near-lirr/3228107/
Combustible Dust Fire & Explosion Researcher
6yThanks for the great article Ryan and for sharing this important information out to the community!
R&D manager at Freeland Horticulture
6yHi Ryan, Another thought provoking article. Be interesting if the trend continues which must be the case if it is lithium batteries. Under reporting of fires is a major concern. Andrew
Managing Director at Securus Risk Advisors Ltd
6yI hate to say it but I would lean more towards commodity prices dropping significantly due to China’s restrictions.