A Worker Gets Hurt at Camden, and the Whole Mess Gets Worse

By Siam Sukkhee Trading Co., Ltd — 2026-07-22 — Waste360 (recycling/scrap)

Someone got hurt at the EMR recycling plant in Camden last week. Seriously hurt—life-threatening injuries, hospital admission, the whole thing.

This happened maybe five days after the place reopened.

You have to understand the context here to understand why this matters beyond the immediate incident. A worker was sent to the hospital with life-threatening injuries on Saturday just days after the EMR scrap metal recycling plant reopened in Camden, following a court ruling. The Camden Fire Department showed up. Someone made a call. The machinery was running.

But that's only half the story.

This facility had been shut down by the city in June. More or less completely—license suspended, operations ceased. Why? Because the city of Camden ordered EMR Recycling to cease operations after more than a dozen scrap yard fires at the facility triggered air pollution concerns in recent years. Not one fire. Not even a few. Twelve major fires in five years. Actually, that's not quite right—depending on which count you look at, it was closer to thirteen.

Let me be specific about what I'm talking about.

EMR has experienced at least a dozen major fires in Camden since 2020, and one from February 2025 burned for more than six hours at the scrap metal plant on the 1500 block of South 6th Street in South Camden and sent toxins into the air. The people living nearby had to evacuate. More than a hundred families. The smoke was visible for miles across Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Then in May 2026, a two-alarm fire was reported at the EMR metal recycling plant in the city's Waterfront South section. This happened after—get this—the latest incident occurs just days after a new fire suppression system was reportedly installed. A new system. Supposedly modern. And it burned anyway.

Camden City Council voted unanimously against letting the company reopen. Unanimously. But then a Superior Court judge looked at the case and ruled otherwise. A Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday, July 8, that the EMR scrap metal recycling facility on the Camden waterfront can reopen, but only under strict conditions.

The court said: fine, reopen. But do it in phases. Install new protocols. Run fire drills. The company threw together something called FireSMART—framework for managing lithium-ion batteries, training systems, thermal cameras, all of it.

And then, within days, someone got seriously injured. Just like that.

Here's what matters for traders and operators like us, working in metals and scrap: this happens because the waste stream is broken. "The scrap metal industry is facing a fundamentally different fire risk environment than it did a decade ago," according to analyst Ryan Fogelman. "Lithium-ion batteries, embedded electronics, vapes, power tools, electric vehicle components and increasingly complex material streams are finding their way into scrap operations every day."

The lithium-ion problem is real.

The year has seen 55 incidents so far at scrap metal facilities. That 35.5% share is well above the typical industry norm of 32%. Metals facilities like EMR are taking the heat—literally. We process the stuff. Batteries come in mixed with scrap. People don't sort properly upstream. We get the consequences.

Safety protocols only work if they're actually enforced. Only if the incoming material is screened. Only if your fire detection systems don't fail when the temperature spikes at 3 a.m.

This injury at Camden isn't an accident. It's a symptom. In 2025 alone, there were 448 publicly reported fires in waste and recycling facilities. Those are the big ones—two-alarm minimum. The smaller incidents don't even make the count.

For anyone operating in this space, this should be a wake-up call about supplier quality and incoming material standards.

Tags: LME metals market analysis