Texas city flooded with mountain of plastic recycling that hasn’t been touched in a year
A Texas city is inundated with mountains of plastic waste that has gone untouched for a year and a half because the facility still fails fire inspections.
Wright Waste Management, located 20 miles outside of downtown Houston, has hundreds of pounds of plastic waste sitting behind a locked gate.
According to authorities, the waste has not been touched for more than a year and a half. CBS News.
To address the ongoing problem of plastic pollution, the Houston Recycling Collaboration was formed, consisting of the City of Houston, ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell, Cyclyx International and FCC Environmental Services.
The device was intended to be able to mechanically recycle (in the traditional way) or chemically burn any type of plastic into new plastic or fuel.
However, according to CBS News, environmental groups found that the plastic left behind by residents had still not been chemically recycled after 20 months of the program.
Cyclyx International is expected to open a new sorting facility in mid-2025, but contamination is piling up at the Wright plant, which has failed multiple fire safety inspections, the news agency said.
The facility does not have the operating permit required to store hazardous materials, flammable and combustible liquids, liquefied petroleum gas and various flammable substances. It has also failed three fire inspections by Harris County Fire, CBS and Inside Climate News found.
Wright Waste Management, 20 miles outside of downtown Houston, has hundreds of pounds of plastic waste just sitting behind a locked gate. The waste hasn’t been touched in more than a year and a half
The company had no firebreaks and no means to control a fire if it broke out, documents said.
Further drama ensued after FCC Environmental Services withdrew from the project because it “did not want its reputation and image to be involved in such irregular and risky practices,” CEO Inigo Sanz said in a press release. letter.
It was said to be opposed to solely chemical recycling of plastics and that the Houston Recycling Collaboration aims to “promote both mechanical and chemical recycling.”
The company also said it cannot accept that hundreds of kilos of plastic are stored in a factory while waiting for chemical recycling.
The Wright plant filed a notice of intent with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in September 2023 to convert from a cardboard recycler to a solid waste recycling facility only.
It should be able to take any plastic and either recycle it mechanically – the traditional way – or chemically burn it into a new plastic or fuel. However, 20 months later, environmental groups discovered that the plastic left behind by residents had still not been chemically recycled
According to Ricky Richter, spokesperson for TCEQ, their application is still “under review.”
When CBS asked about the fire inspections, owner Stratton Wright referred them to Cyclyx, which said Wright “does not represent us and they are a temporary solution at this time before we [our] facility operational.’
However, Exxon Mobil’s chemical recycling plant in Baytown is operational and claims to have processed 60 million pounds of plastic waste, a figure the company hopes to increase to a billion pounds.
Despite this, the US Environmental Protection Agency has stated that chemical recycling should not be considered recycling at all.
According to CBS News, critics argue that chemical recycling is merely a promise to keep plastic production high and prevent the pollution problem from actually being solved.
The facility does not have the operating permit required to store hazardous materials, flammable and combustible liquids, LP gas and various flammable substances. It has also failed three fire inspections by Harris County Fire.
“Recycling may be a tiny part of the solution, but it’s not going to solve the huge plastic pollution problem that we have,” Veena Singla, an assistant professor at Columbia University, told CBS News.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is investigating Exxon for alleged misleading public reporting on pollution and recycling and the “myth that recycling can solve the plastics crisis.”
However, Exxon points to the figures and says it cannot be a myth as £60 million has already been spent.
“When we say it’s a myth, when we’re actually doing it, I’m not sure I agree with that,” Ray Mastroleo, Exxon’s global market development manager for advanced recycling, told CBS News.
More waste is expected to end up at the Wright facility as the Houston Recycling Collaboration expands its customer drop-off points from one last April.