‘They burn white hot’: Lithium-ion batteries a growing risk for Bay Area recycling centers

Joe La Mariana will never forget the night: Sept. 7, 2016. It was 8 p.m., and La Mariana was working out on his exercycle. Then he got the phone call.

“It was a four-alarm fire,” said La Mariana, the executive director of RethinkWaste, a recycling and disposal agency that serves the San Francisco Peninsula. “Our materials recovery facility [MRF] — the place where mixed materials from recycling bins are sorted and prepared for sale — was burning. I went down there immediately. It took a hundred firefighters to get it under control, and I didn’t get home until 4 a.m.”