Recycling Fire Safety

The Recycled Materials Association has released new fire-safety guidance for recycling operations, organised around four principles — prevention, detection, mitigation and education — that speak directly to one of the industry’s most persistent hazards: scrap-tire and material stockpile fires.

Approved by the association’s board, the guidance encourages facilities to inspect inbound material, maintain fire breaks, keep suppression equipment functional, and train employees through regular drills and partnerships with local fire departments.

Why Tire Stockpiles Burn the Way They Do

Scrap tires are an acute fire risk. Stockpiled whole and shredded tires are highly flammable, difficult to extinguish once alight, and can burn for months to years — as large tire-monofill fires have shown. That makes containment, storage discipline and early detection the difference between a contained incident and a multi-year remediation.

The guidance’s emphasis on processing and storage controls maps directly onto how a well-engineered recycling plant should operate: material moved through quickly rather than allowed to accumulate, with detection systems and fire breaks built into the layout.

Safety and Processing Go Together

Fire risk is not separate from good operations — it is a symptom of slow-moving, poorly managed material. The facilities that prevent fires are the same ones that process scrap efficiently, which is the entire premise of a purpose-built resource-recovery plant.

Learn More About Safe Resource Recovery Facilities

• Advanced Tire Pyrolysis Technology
• Plant Design & Engineering
• Facility Efficiency Upgrades
• What Is Pyrolysis?

Partner With The KleanTeam for Safe, Compliant Plants

Safe. Clean. Profitable. One Proven Partner.

Fire safety is a design decision, not an afterthought. Klean Industries engineers tire and plastic pyrolysis plants with the containment, storage discipline and process control that keep material moving safely through the facility — reducing fire risk while turning waste into recovered carbon black, pyrolysis oil and steel.

Klean’s Key Advantages:

• ✅ Thirty-plus years engineering commercial tire and plastic pyrolysis plants.
• ✅ 3 recovered carbon black (rCB) plants built in India over the past 2 years.
• ✅ KBR added Klean’s proprietary TyreNova tire-pyrolysis technology to its IP portfolio.
• ✅ KleanLoop blockchain provides end-to-end feedstock traceability.

Ready to design fire safety into your plant from day one?

Speak with a Plant Engineering Expert at Klean Industries » GO.