Report portrays chemical recycling stockpiles forming in Texas

The growth of reportedly visible stockpiles of mixed plastic scrap has created unwelcome scrutiny for the Houston Recycling Collaboration effort introduced more than two years ago.

The Houston Recycling Collaboration consists of the city of Houston, ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell, Cyclyx International and FCC Environmental Services. Those entities signed a memorandum of understanding to form the collaboration, which aims to increase Houston’s plastics recycling rate and help establish the city as a leader for both mechanical and advanced recycling processes.

A late-August report by CBS News and Inside Climate News, however, indicates FCC Environmental dropped out of the organization last year, in part citing safety concerns about mounting stockpiles of discarded plastic.

The lengthy report says the stockpiles are forming at a site in northwest Houston known as Wright Waste Management and includes photos of materials the report claims are at the site.

Lead author James Brugger links the stockpiles to chemical, or advanced, recycling investments being made by ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell and Cyclyx International.

While mechanical recycling efforts have traditionally focused on separating discarded plastics by resin type and color, some advocates of chemical recycling initially presented it as a way to handle mixed plastics.

Some of that initial confidence in the future of chemical processing for mixed plastics has diminished in the face of research, trial-and-error efforts or criticism that some chemical recycling allow recycled content to be a relatively minor ingredient in a production process.

For the last couple years, however, mixed plastics have been collected in and around Houston, seemingly in anticipation of end markets coming online.

Brugger and fellow reporters Chris Spinder, Ben Tracy and Tracy Wholf, however, says the stockpiles at Wright Waste failed fire code inspections and are poised to keep growing as collection efforts expand this year and next.

Cyclyx International anticipates ramping up its Texas chemical recycling plant in mid-2025. While ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell have invested heavily to chemically convert plastic scrap into new materials at a facility in Baytown, Texas, the report indicates it thus far has been accepting less mixed sources of scrap compared with those collected by the collaboration, including byproduct plastic from industrial sources.

Some materials collected by the Houston Recycling Collaboration likely are heading to mechanical recycling facilities, as indicated in the group’s 2022 introductory announcement.

But that announcement also stated residents can bring any plastic waste to drop-off locations—even foam plastic, bubble wrap and bags—and if it can't be mechanically recycled, it reportedly will be superheated and chemically processed into new plastic, fuels or other products.

That wide collection net and subsequent stockpiles seem to have caused FCC, a Spain-based waste and recycling firm that operates mechanical recycling material recovery facilities (MRFs) in Texas, to reconsider its membership in the consortium last year.

“As a member of the [Houston Recycling Collaboration], FCC does not want its reputation and image involved in such irregular and risky practices," reads a letter from FCC that is included in the report.

Brugger says the letter does not mention the Wright Waste site by name. However, that location has attracted unwelcome attention in part to Harris County, Texas, fire inspection failures and missing permits, some of which are reproduced in the CBS and Inside Climate News report.

The report also indicates that in 2023, Wright Waste Management notified the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) that it intends to operate a MRF on the site, which a TCEQ spokesperson says is under review.

The final section of the report includes comments from chemical recycling skeptics and from an ExxonMobil executive who says his company already has processed some 30,000 tons of material in Baytown, defending the process as not being a myth.