CBS News Covers Revive Environmental’s Role in New Jersey’s AFFF Collection and Destruction Program
CBS News featured New Jersey’s statewide collection program for aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) on its national broadcast, and the story didn’t stop at collection. It followed the foam to Revive Environmental’s Columbus, Ohio facility, where it is being permanently destroyed using the PFAS Annihilator®.
Watch the full segment below, then read on for more.
The Scale of What New Jersey Did
New Jersey ran one of the largest AFFF collection and destruction programs in the country: more than 150,000 gallons were collected from over 350 fire departments across two simultaneous collection sites. New Jersey’s AFFF ban takes effect January 1, 2027, and departments across the state needed a plan for what to do with the foam sitting in their trucks and storage rooms before that deadline arrives.
The state awarded the collection and destruction work to Revive Environmental in November 2025. Partnering closely with Republic Services on collection and logistics, Revive finished the entire takeback by March 2026. That is record time for a program this size.
The work went beyond the foam itself. Revive also decontaminated nearly 50 of New Jersey’s fire trucks, flushing legacy AFFF from their onboard systems and destroying the rinse water in the same reactors that neutralize the foam.
The Health Urgency Behind It
Cancer is the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths in the fire service, and AFFF is part of the reason why. Firefighters have handled this foam for decades without knowing the dangers they posed.
“It was like sitting on a bomb,” Jacobstown Volunteer Fire Chief Robert Gancarz told CBS News. His department had used AFFF since the mid-1980s, and he turned in all 580 gallons of it. His father, a firefighter his entire adult life, was diagnosed with cancer in 2024.
Health studies eventually confirmed what firefighters had suspected. Getting rid of AFFF stopped being about compliance and became about health. New Jersey’s program treated it that way, moving foam out of firehouses on a timeline that matched the urgency.
The Foam is Destroyed, Not Stored
Collecting the foam is only half the job.
“We process it directly through our supercritical water reactors,” Revive Environmental CEO Rick Gillespie told CBS News. “And what comes out of those reactors is clean water.”
The PFAS Annihilator uses Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO) to break PFAS apart at the molecular level, achieving 99.99%+ destruction and converting it into water, carbon dioxide, and inorganic salts. Every batch of processed effluent is independently tested, and the treated water meets EPA drinking water standards before it’s discharged. What comes in as AFFF leaves as clean, verified water, with a Certificate of Processing to prove it.
That distinction matters for liability as much as it matters for the environment. Departments and states that store or transfer PFAS are still holding the risk. Destruction ends it.
A Blueprint for Other States
Every state holding legacy AFFF faces the same question: how do you get it out of firehouses and prove it’s truly gone? Revive has worked with Ohio, New Hampshire, North Carolina and New Jersey, and the approach holds at any scale. Register the material, collect the foam, then destroy it permanently, with proof of custody at every step. New Jersey pushed that model to record scale. With more than a dozen states now working to collect and destroy their AFFF, Revive gives each one a proven path to follow instead of starting from scratch.
Watch the CBS segment and read the accompanying article to see the collection and destruction process firsthand. If your state or department is still sitting on legacy AFFF stockpiles, connect with Revive Environmental to talk about what a takeback and destruction program looks like for you.
