## Facts

- Rineco Chemical Industries, Inc. operated a facility in Benton, Arkansas described as the largest single-site hazardous-waste fuel-blending facility in the United States.
- The facility received more than 400 types of solid and liquid hazardous wastes from multiple generators.
- Rineco applied for and obtained a permit under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to operate a hazardous-waste management facility, but it did not have a RCRA permit for a separate Thermal Metal Wash (TMW) unit at the site.
- The TMW was a patented process described as relating “generally to waste processing.”
- In the TMW process, metal items (including metal vapors) were placed into the unit and subjected to high-temperature thermal processing in which materials were thermally treated, destroyed, incinerated, or burned.
- The thermal processing produced substantial quantities of oil and char.
- Rineco blended the oil and char into hazardous-waste-derived fuel (HWDF) and sent that fuel to boilers and industrial furnaces (BIFs) for burning and energy recovery.
- The treated metal exiting the TMW was recovered rather than sent to a BIF and was treated as a recovered metal output.
- Rineco argued that operating the TMW did not require a RCRA permit because the unit qualified for a recycling exemption, emphasizing that the metal placed in the TMW was recovered.
- The United States sued Rineco seeking injunctive relief and civil penalties, alleging Rineco was required to obtain a RCRA permit for ownership and operation of the TMW.

## Issues

1. Whether Rineco’s Thermal Metal Wash unit constituted hazardous-waste treatment (including thermal destruction/incineration) requiring a RCRA permit.
2. Whether Rineco could avoid RCRA permitting by characterizing the TMW as exempt “recycling” based on recovery of the metal output, even though the process generated oil and char blended into HWDF for off-site burning in BIFs.
3. Whether the TMW’s operation—thermal processing that burned or destroyed hazardous constituents and produced fuel components—placed the unit within RCRA’s hazardous-waste regulatory controls rather than within a recycling exclusion.

## Decision

- The court ruled for the United States that the TMW’s high-temperature operation was regulated hazardous-waste treatment and required a RCRA permit.
- The court rejected Rineco’s reliance on a recycling exemption where the TMW functioned as a thermal treatment process that destroyed or burned hazardous constituents and generated oil and char used as components of HWDF for combustion in BIFs.
- The court concluded that recovering metal from the process did not remove the TMW from RCRA permitting requirements when the unit’s operation involved thermal processing of hazardous-waste-containing materials and production of fuel streams for burning.

## Legal Principles

- Whether a unit is subject to RCRA permitting turns on the unit’s actual function and operation, not the operator’s label (such as calling the activity “recycling”).
- Thermal processing that destroys, incinerates, or burns hazardous constituents is “treatment” for RCRA purposes and generally requires a permit when conducted as part of hazardous-waste management.
- A recycling theory based on recovery of one output (e.g., scrap metal) does not, by itself, exempt a thermal process from RCRA controls where the same process generates oil/char used to make hazardous-waste-derived fuel for combustion.
- Where hazardous-waste-derived streams are generated in a thermal process and then blended into fuel destined for burning in boilers or industrial furnaces, the operation aligns with regulated hazardous-waste treatment rather than an exempt metal-recovery activity.

## Conclusion

United States v. Rineco Chemical Industries held that Rineco needed a RCRA permit for its Thermal Metal Wash unit because the unit thermally treated hazardous-waste-containing materials by burning or destroying hazardous constituents and produced oil and char that were blended into hazardous-waste-derived fuel for combustion in boilers and industrial furnaces; the fact that metal was recovered from the process did not make the unit exempt as recycling.


United States v. Rineco Chemical Industries, 2009 WL 801608 (2009)