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Houston’s plastic waste is piling up, waiting on the promise of “advanced recycling”
This story is a partnership between Inside Climate News and CBS News. Watch the CBS Reports documentary, “Advanced Recycling: Does Big Plastic’s Idea Work?”
About 48 million tons of plastic waste are generated each year in the U.S., and very little of it is ever recycled. The city of Houston says it has an innovative new program that can recycle any type of plastic, calling it a model for the nation, but environmental groups say the results leave much to be desired.
Brandy Deason, a climate justice coordinator for Air Alliance Houston, has been adding tracking devices when she bags up her plastics for recycling. She was skeptical of Houston’s program and its claims that it could recycle any type of plastic.The tracker showed her bags ended up at a storage site — not a recycling center.
Deason said she doesn’t think the average person in Houston is aware that this is where their recycling ends up.
“I think that they’ve gotten the idea that it’s being taken care of and being recycled,” she said.
The city says it has collected 250 tons of plastic since the end of 2022, but almost none of it has been recycled yet. The plastic is supposed to come to a Houston warehouse where a long-delayed sorting facility has yet to be built.
“We need a huge supply of plastics to get ready for startup here, and we want to start that now in order to get ahead of it,” said Ryan Tebbets, a vice president at Cyclyx International, one of the companies involved in the recycling program. Tebbets insisted the plastic would eventually be recycled.
Plastic is made from oil and gas, and it comes in thousands of chemically distinct varieties that can’t be mixed together. That’s why less than 10% gets recycled. But Cyclyx says it figured out a way to sort and process any kind of plastic into pellets that can then be recycled.
Tebbets admits the company has never done the process at scale, noting the Houston facility is its first. Cyclyx is partly funded by ExxonMobil, one of the biggest plastic makers on the planet. The company is trying to prove that something it calls “advanced recycling” can help solve the planet’s crisis of plastic waste, and the company hopes the Houston program could prove to be a solution nationwide.
Ray Mastroleo, Exxon’s global market development manager for advanced recycling, said the process “ultimately allows us to take a wide range of plastic waste that doesn’t have a home today and repurpose them. Advanced recycling is real. It’s happening. We’re doing it.”
The process uses heat to break down plastic to its molecular level. A small amount is turned into new plastic, but much of it becomes fuel that is burned, creating planet-warming emissions. Exxon says it has processed 60 million pounds of plastic waste so far, but the industry has touted advanced recycling for decades and never made it work at a large scale.
Plastic makers are now waging a new recycling ad campaign — just as Shell Oil shelved its advanced recycling plans, calling them “unfeasible.” Meanwhile, California’s attorney general is investigating Exxon, accusing the industry of “a half century of deception” about recycling.
When asked if a plastic maker could be trusted by the public when it says it’s found a solution to the problem of plastic waste, Mastroleo told CBS News, “That’s challenging the integrity of who we are. But this is just the starting point and we are in it for the long haul.”
In the meantime, all that plastic is still piling up in Houston.
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
