Defunct electronics recycling companies ordered to pay $3M for hazardous waste violations in Ohio

A Franklin County, Ohio, judge has ordered the owners of two defunct electronics recycling companies to pay $3 million in civil penalties for abandoning hazardous waste in Columbus, Ohio.

Judge Andria Noble issued the final ruling July 28, adopting in full a magistrate’s earlier decision against Closed Loop Refining & Recovery and Closed Loop Glass Solutions.

“These companies dumped a toxic mountain of waste and vanished, but the consequences caught up with them,” Ohio Attorney General David Yost says. “This is the final chapter in one of the largest hazardous waste cases our office has ever taken on.”

Closed Loop has been tangled in litigation since 2016 over its abandoned cathode ray tube (CRT) recycling sites in Ohio and Arizona.

According to court documents, Closed Loop accumulated 150 million pounds of CRT and other waste in two warehouses in Columbus. CRT is 15 percent lead by weight and is regulated by Ohio unless it is going into the recycling process, in which case it is exempt from permit requirements.

Peter Maneff, an environmental supervisor at the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who inspected the facilities from 2011-2016, testified that both facilities were no longer able to function as recycling facilities and therefore impermissibly storing the materials. Maneff also testified that on a 2016 visit, he observed the most hazardous waste he had ever seen in one place.

The warehouse owners, Garrison Southfield Park and Olymbec USA, spent $17 million over 3.5 years to decontaminate the sites, Yost says. Yost’s office previously settled with Garrison and Olymbec for $250,000.

The judge’s ruling brings an end to a lawsuit filed by Yost’s office against the companies and the property owners.