The Lawsuit

California Metal Recyclers File Suit for Injunctive Relief to Prevent Imposition of Unnecessary and Harmful Regulation

DTSC Action Threatens Largest, Most Successful Recycling Program in CA History 

SACRAMENTO, CA — After years of attempting to work with the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the California Metal Shredder Coalition has filed a complaint against DTSC to prevent the unlawful imposition of “hazardous waste” facility permitting requirements on metal shredding and recycling facilities. 

The scrap-metal recycling industry provides critical recycling services for millions of end-of-life vehicles, household appliances and other forms of scrap metal and is the one sector in the recycling industry in California that is still functioning well, with much of the other recycling of used consumer goods such as bottles and paper already shut down or in trouble. 

Scrap metal has never been classified as a “hazardous waste” under either federal or California law – and therefore metal-shredding facilities have never been considered “hazardous waste” processing facilities under either federal or state law.

The metal-shredding industry is already extensively regulated by a wide array of federal, state, regional and local authorities, including federal and state air and water quality laws, regional water control boards, regional air quality districts, and local fire departments as well as other government entities that deal with land use and local permitting.

DTSC’s action is unlawful and threatens to undermine the scrap-metal recycling industry in California. Californians have enthusiastically embraced recycling, because they know that recycling helps reduce pollution, reduces the need for raw materials, preserves natural resources and reduces the energy used to mine and process materials. California, which has always been a national leader in recycling, is already facing a crisis, as hundreds of recycling operations have closed down.

Now, state government, through DTSC, is about to worsen the recycling crisis by threatening to put the largest, most successful, and most viable remaining recycling operation out of business by making it infeasible to recycle scrap metals like junk cars, used refrigerators, and the many other thousands of end-of-life metal products.

Instead of being recycled into new products and reducing waste, this “hazardous waste” designation by DTSC will result in such materials accumulating in huge quantities, increasing urban blight and creating eyesores, and causing potential threats to health and safety by being abandoned in back alleys, yards, neighborhood streets, vacant lots – and through a geometric increase in “midnight dumping” along roadsides or in empty fields.

The California Metal Shredder Coalition seeks a determination from the Court that the Hazardous Waste Control Law does not authorize DTSC to require “hazardous waste” treatment facility permits for metal processing and recycling operations conducted at California metal shredding facilities.   The complaint also seeks injunctive relief.  

###