Fire destroys paper and plastic recycling company

A fire, started with a spark from a contractors cutting torch, destroyed the 32,000 sq. ft. paper and plastic recycling facility owned by The Grossman Group, Inc. of Westerville, Ohio on October 18, 2008. The building, equipment and approximately 750 tons of paper and plastic were destroyed in the blaze. Fire fighters were hampered by a lack of sufficient water to the interior water hoses.

The building was owned by the City of Columbus, sub-leased to the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO), who sub-leased to The Grossman Group, Inc.

“This is truly an unfortunate situation,” said Steve Grossman, president of The Grossman Group. “We have gone through almost three years of a financially devastating venture in a pilot program of separating commercial cardboard from trash with SWACO, and only recently started turning the company around by performing recycling for regular recyclables,” said Grossman.

“We will be making decisions in the next few weeks regarding what the future holds for this company,” said Grossman, “but it is an amazing feeling and a real tribute to everyone associated with it when we have received dozens of calls from not just our customers wanting to know how they can work with us and get over this hurdle, but from three local recyclers opening themselves to assist in our processing until we make decisions. We were up and servicing all of our accounts two days later because of these generous recycling allies,” said Grossman. “Our immediate goal is to work with all of the powers to be in cleaning up this mess and above all, help our displaced employees who we could not bring into one of our other companies, find jobs within their skill levels,” said Grossman.