
Experts discuss solutions to Texas’s plastic pollution problem

Environment Texas organized a webinar on August 5 to discuss the state of plastic pollution in Texas. Texas recycles only 23% of its waste, a full 12 percentage points below the national average. Some cities currently struggle with the ‘three Rs:’ reducing, reusing, and recycling. Houston, for example, produces a daily average of ten pounds of trash per person, twice the national and state average.
Solutions to Texas' plastic pollution problem
Environment Texas Executive Director Luke Metzger emphasized that “This staggering amount of waste contributes to significant environmental problems including methane emissions from landfills. According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Texas landfills contribute the CO2 equivalent of 12.7 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year.”
Metzger discussed the potential for landfills to pollute the groundwater and environment around them, making them an unpleasant neighbor for many Texans. He said that waste ending up outside landfills is a significant problem, as plastic pollution continues to plague our beaches.
Metzger then outlined a number of waste reduction strategies that could provide a path toward a more sustainable future. Large companies like Amazon and CocaCola have committed to reducing their waste and small businesses like restaurants are adopting reusable containers. Metzger expressed hope for Texas legislation establishing the “right to repair,” which would help individuals fix their own consumer goods instead of throwing them away. He noted how container deposit laws, which use refundable deposits to encourage recycling, have been extremely successful in other states.
Mike Garver, the CEO of Texans for Clean Water, discussed the state of plastic pollution in the Houston area. He explained how the Buffalo Bayou is consistently littered with floatables, like plastic bottles and styrofoam. He said that when people litter, the wind and rain wash these items into bodies of water.
“A large amount of the floatables in Texas are drink containers that would not be there if we had a 10-cent deposit refund as it exists in other states,” said Garver.
After years of advocacy efforts, Garver expressed hope for a deposit refund in Texas. He underlined the high cost of cleaning up floatables and the dangers they can pose to animals and humans once they become microplastics.
Maia Corbitt, the President of Texans for Clean Water, highlighted the high costs of litter according to a 2015 study. For example, cleaning up litter costs the City of Houston $21 million annually. Because Houston lacks a solid waste fee, these costs come out of taxes.
She cited figures that prove the efficacy of deposit refunds. According to a 2020 Keep America Beautiful study, deposit systems are associated with a 30% reduction in litter. Furthermore, the Container Recycling Institute has demonstrated that states with these programs have significantly higher recycling rates.
Regarding the economic benefits of recycling, Corbitt said “We’re missing out on an enormous economic driver. The scrap value of the material we’re either putting in a hole in the ground or in a waterway is close to $350 million per year.”
She also spotlighted the potential for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for Packaging programs. While deposit systems focus on the consumer side, EPR programs focus on the system at large by making companies responsible for their design choices.
Emily Friedman, the Recycled Plastics Senior Editor for ICIS, discussed the market drivers for the recycled plastics industry. She outlined ways to support recycling on the supply and demand side.
According to Friedman, buying from companies with voluntary recycling goals demonstrates a demand for recycled plastic. On the supply side, she highlighted laws passed in five states that require producers to include a certain percentage of recycled plastic in their products.
Friedman also dispelled the notion that all recycled plastic is more expensive; in fact, some types of recycled plastics are cheaper than their virgin counterparts.
Dr. Veena Singla, an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, spoke about the numerous concerns with chemical recycling.
Mechanical recycling, which the previous panelists spoke about, involves turning used plastic goods into new plastics; chemical recycling, a much newer technology, typically using combustion or high pressure to turn used plastic into either fuel, chemicals, or new plastics. In fact, chemical recycling rarely creates new plastics the way mechanical recycling does.
“The majority of existing chemical recycling facilities are actually producing fuels that get burned,” said Singla.
According to Singla, the processes involved in chemical recycling produce air pollutants and hazardous waste including known carcinogens. Furthermore, chemical recycling plants are frequently located in low-income communities of color that already struggle with pollution.
Singla also discussed how mechanical recycling outperforms chemical recycling when it comes to economic, environmental, resource, and technical considerations. According to a Department of Energy study, pyrolysis and gasification, two chemical recycling methods, are 10 to 100 times worse than virgin plastic when it comes to these measures.
“The plastics industry has really been promoting chemical recycling as this magical cure that’s going to recycle all these hard-to-recycle plastics,” said Singla. “According to ProPublica, pyrolysis isn’t actually recycling very much plastic and there’s some industry accounting games that they’re using to make it look like it recycles more plastic than it actually physically does.”
Jennifer Hadayia, the Executive Director of Air Alliance Houston, discussed the state of chemical recycling in the Houston area. She noted a 2022 memorandum of understanding between the City of Houston and ExxonMobil, Cyclyx, and LyondellBasell that formed Houston Recycling Collaboration, a chemical recycling initiative. Hadayia expressed Air Alliance Houston’s opposition to this program based on chemical recycling’s health risks, environmental hazards, and lack of proven financial viability
She added that “Despite what Houstonians have been told, no plastics as far as we can tell from the Houston Recycling Collaboration have been recycled mechanically, chemically, or otherwise.”
Hadayia proposed that instead of pursuing unproven and dirty technologies like chemical recycling, local leaders invest in mechanical recycling efforts, like the ones mentioned by previous speakers.
After the panelists’ presentations, they fielded a Q&A session where they discussed how to support plastic rebate programs, express desires for sustainable manufacturing, and take action within one’s own community.