July 2024 Fire Report: We Are Trending in the Wrong Direction

If you're like me, you dislike when people start a conversation by saying, “Would you like the good news or the bad news first?” Clearly, I want only the good news, but now I must make the unenviable choice of either starting with the bad news in an effort to get it over with quickly or hearing the good news first and then being devastated by the bad. 

As someone who prefers to get the bad news out of the way, I’ll start with the bad news this month, which is the number of reported waste and recycling facility fires in the U.S. and Canada is coming in higher in 2024 than years past. 

In June, we experienced 49 fires, 28 of which occurred in waste, paper and plastic operations, 15 in metal operations, three in organics operations, two in rubber operations and one at an electronic recycler. Eleven of these events were considered catastrophic, and based on my definition of costs versus downtime at the facility, the total damage was more than $500,000 for each of these events.

The good news is, however, that looking at historical trends, the worst is over, and we have made it through the heart of the storm.

The summertime spike is here, and we still have three to four more months of elevated fire incidents compared to the rest of the year. But if history holds, the worst is over. The reality is we are still seeing a spike caused by increased heat and dryness. This spike is not due to an uptick of lithium-ion batteries in the waste and recycling streams, but I do believe they are responsible for the increase in fires we have seen since 2016.  It is pretty clear from the studies over the past few years that about one in two fires at our facilities is caused by batteries. 

At Fire Rover, we have successfully responded to 300-plus fire incidents at our clients’ facilities in the past month. Although the number of incidents is slowing down, I am consolidating our first-half numbers to update our Fire Rover Key Performance Indicator Dashboard to include 2022, 2023 and the first half of 2024, which I will share in next month’s article.  

The scariest part of the increase in reported fires is if you estimate the percentage of materials recovery facilities, transfer stations and scrap metal facilities, which the Environmental Research & Education Foundation estimated to be about 10,000 in 2013, at Fire Rover, we are protecting more than 7% of the waste and recycling industry. Additionally, we typically protect our clients' highest volume and revenue-producing assets. Yet the numbers for the industry at large are still increasing.

If we stay on trend, accounting for fewer total fire incidents typically reported in the back half of the year, we are still on pace to have the highest year ever for fires. Add to this the fact that battery end-of-life numbers have skyrocketed. So, we are in the perfect storm with increased numbers of hazards in our waste and recycling streams and very few solutions on the horizon to do something about it. However, when we do look at solutions, they need to move the needle, and the juice needs to be worth the squeeze. 

One solution we all know works is education and getting people to properly recycle these batteries. With more and more drop-off locations popping up in major areas of the country,  I think we could see a turn for the better thanks to continued education and convenience for recyclers. For example, see the video below where I brought my rechargeable batteries to a Lowe’s take-back center. If you don’t have a Lowe’s or Home Depot near you, a quick visit to the Call2Recycle website will help you find responsible ways to recycle your batteries. For additional resources, such as posters, infographics and one-pagers, check out the National Waste & Recycling Association’s lithium-ion battery resources.      

I posted this video, and one of my subscribers of my 🔥 Fire Safety Report 🔥 responded to my post with this comment: “I think this is asking too much of the average consumer. First, you will have to explain to them what a lithium battery is. Estimate it will take five years of PSAs [public service announcements] on all sorts of media to do this.” While the subscriber is not wrong, and education continues to be a challenging and long route, it doesn’t mean it is not worth doing; it just means we better work on our other solutions in parallel, including new technologies, operational best practices and continuing to engineer these hazards out of our waste and recycling streams. I could have said the same thing five years ago regarding the installation of the Fire Rover solution across the globe, but if we would have just thrown in the towel and given up, we wouldn’t be helping the industry become safer every day. It takes a team effort to combat a large problem such as fires in the industry, and we mustn’t back down when times get hard.

Stephen Martins of N+P Group B.V. shared a LinkedIn post expressing his concern about the number of batteries sorted out during one shift at one of his plants.

The number of vapes accidentally entering our waste and recycling streams is clearly out of control, and we need all hands on deck to solve this issue.

Conclusion

I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel a certain sense of relief when May and June pass, as this cycle of increased fires seems to reoccur each year like clockwork. But if we do not want this trend to continue, now is the time to set up the infrastructure for collection and educate the public on the harms of batteries when they are improperly disposed. I am a firm believer that we are the cause and solution to all of our problems.  

Ryan Fogelman, JD/MBA, is vice president of strategic partnerships for Fire Rover. He is focused on bringing innovative safety solutions to market, and two of his solutions have won the distinguished Edison Innovation Award for Industrial Safety and Consumer Products. He has been compiling and publishing the “Reported Waste & Recycling Facility Fires In The US/CAN” since February 2016 and the “Waste & Recycling Facility Fires Annual Report.” Fogelman regularly speaks on the topic of the scope of fire problems facing the waste and recycling industries, early detection solutions, proper fire planning and early-stage fire risk mitigation. Additionally, Fogelman is on the National Fire Protection Association’s Technical Committee for Hazard Materials. (Connect with Ryan on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanjayfogelman or email at [email protected])