On June 12, a fire broke out at Richard S. Burns & Company’s 13-acre facility in Philadelphia. The cause, CDRA later learned, was believed to be a lithium-ion battery that had no business being in the debris stream in the first place. The fire was contained. No one was hurt. But for a company that has spent decades building one of the most respected operations in our industry, and one that CDRA proudly named its 2025 Recycler of the Year, it was a wake-up call none of us can afford to ignore.
Allen Burns has been candid about what that day taught him. Crews need to know when to stop fighting a fire and simply walk away from the pile. Equipment can be replaced. Insurance can cover a rebuild. What matters most is getting people out safely. As Burns put it afterward, plainly and without hesitation: “I can’t fix a person.”
That single line has stayed with a lot of us since we first heard it.
A Problem That Is Getting Worse, Not Better
The Burns fire was not an isolated event, and it will not be the last. Industry fire tracking shows 2025 was the worst year on record for publicly reported fires at waste and recycling facilities across the U.S. and Canada, with total damages estimated above two and a half billion dollars. Early data from 2026 shows the pace holding steadily rather than easing off. In just the past month, member and industry facilities from Kentucky to Ohio to Nova Scotia to Texas have reported fires tied to the same root cause: batteries that should never have ended up on a tipping floor, in a truck, or inside a shredder.
The scale of what is entering our waste stream is staggering. Billions of batteries, along with an estimated 1.2 billion disposable vapes, flow into North American waste systems every year. For C&D recyclers, that means the risk is not confined to electronics or municipal recycling streams. It shows up in demolition debris, in mixed loads, in places our members are sorting by hand every single day.
CDRA Is Responding, and We Need You With Us
On June 30, CDRA convened a special roundtable on lithium-ion battery fires, bringing together our Safety and Risk Management Committee with counterparts from SWANA, the Recycled Materials Association, and the National Waste and Recycling Association. The conversation made one thing clear. No single organization is going to solve this alone, and no single facility should have to face it alone either.
Out of that roundtable, CDRA is expanding our safety focus to include battery recycling and diversion. We are creating initiatives on member education, safety communication, legislative tracking, and technology solutions, so that facilities across our membership have real tools and real support, not just warnings after the fact.
This is where we need you. If battery-related incidents are a concern at your facility, or if you have already built protocols worth sharing, we want you at the table. Your experience, including the hard lessons, is exactly what will help the next facility avoid a fire altogether.
What You Can Do Now
While CDRA works on the policy and education side, there are steps every facility can take today:
- Strengthen intake screening. Train staff to recognize battery-powered devices and vapes before they reach the tipping floor or the shredder.
- Invest in detection and suppression. Thermal cameras, infrared detection, and rapid-response suppression systems have proven their value across the industry this year.
- Train crews on when to stop. Allen Burns’s lesson applies everywhere. Equipment and buildings can be rebuilt. People cannot be replaced. Make sure every employee knows the point at which they need to walk away.
- Know your state’s rules. Battery extended producer responsibility laws are now active in eight states and Washington, D.C., with Oregon joining this year. If your facility operates in a state considering similar legislation, CDRA’s legislative tracking can help you stay ahead of it.
- Speak up in Pennsylvania. House Bill 1233, a battery stewardship bill CDRA has been tracking, passed the Pennsylvania House and has been sitting in a Senate committee since late last year. If you operate in Pennsylvania, your voice with your state senator could help move it forward.
Join Us
We work together because our members deserve better than reacting to the next fire after it happens. If you want to be part of shaping how CDRA and this industry respond to the battery fire crisis, reach out to our office at info@cdrecycling.org and let us know you would like to join and participate in our efforts as we build out new programs to support diverting batteries from our waste stream, with the goal that fewer of these fires happen at all.
If your facility has experienced a battery-related fire or has protocols to share, we would like to hear from you for a future member spotlight on safety best practices.