Where There’s Plastic, There’s Fire. Indiana Blaze Highlights Concerns Over Expanding Plastic Recycling

China’s ban on accepting most plastic waste may have led to a burning stockpile in eastern Indiana that sent black smoke billowing into the air—and local residents scrambling to safety.

The dense black smoke from a fire at a plastics recycler in Richmond, Indiana, that began Tuesday afternoon and continued burning on Wednesday, forcing the evacuation of 2,000 nearby residents, was dramatic, but far from an isolated incident in the world of facilities that store or recycle vast quantities of plastic waste.

There are hundreds of such fires in the United States and Canada every year and most of them never make the news, said Richard Meier, a private fire investigator in Florida who worked 24 years as a mechanical engineer in manufacturing, including in plastics companies.

“These plastics, most of them are derived from oil. They are petrochemicals and they have the same propensity for burning once ignited,” Meier said.

So far, in Richmond, in eastern Indiana between Indianapolis and Dayton, Ohio, local health officials say the biggest threat to the public is from breathing particulates in the smoke.

But as firefighters and residents there are now experiencing, the toxic chemicals plastic fires can release also pose significant threats.

“There can be a lot of nasty things that come along with burning plastics. Polyurethane can release hydrogen cyanide,” Meier said, referring to the chemical warfare agent.

“Dioxins come from burning plastics,” he said, referring to a group of highly toxic chemicals that can cause cancer, reproductive and developmental problems, damage to the immune system and interfere with hormones.

“That’s why firefighters wear full respiratory gear when fighting a plastic fire, with an air tank on their back,” Meier said.

On Wednesday, Richmond Mayor Dave Snow told reporters the fire occurred at a plastic waste collection business that city officials have been trying to clean up for several years.

“We were aware what was operating (there) was a fire hazard,” Snow said. “The business owner is responsible for all this.”

The fire raised new and old concerns about the global plastics crisis that is overwhelming landfills and collection sites, choking the oceans and depositing microplastics inside the bodies and bloodstreams of wild animals and humans alike. Although plastics are ubiquitous in much of modern life, the United Nations and many of its member countries now view them as posing a health and climate threat throughout their lifecycle, and are working on a plastics treaty in an effort to stop their proliferation and clean them up.

In Richmond, City Councilman Ron Oler said as much as 70 million pounds of waste plastic was stored inside and outside several buildings on the burning property, which is near a residential area.

He said the plastics there were the hardest types to recycle and had been piling up ever since China stopped accepting most plastic waste —including from Richmond—under a policy called National Sword.

“This guy was buying up scrap plastic and selling it to China,” Oler said. When the China market dried up, so did his business prospects, he added.

But the plant’s owner kept receiving it and storing it, Oler said.

“Our biggest fear has been there would be a fire because there is so much plastic,” he said. Cleanup efforts, however, have been tied up in the courts, he said.

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