My coverage of chemical recycling of plastic waste began with both a hunch and a tip. A hunch that industry marketing around chemical or “advanced” recycling sounded too good to be true, and a tip that I should look into a company called Brightmark, which had built a chemical plant in an Indiana town to process plastic waste into new plastic. My source said the plant was having a hard time starting up. So I dug in.
I found experts to help me understand chemical recycling, filed requests for state environmental records, talked to chemical industry lobbyists and drove six hours to visit the Brightmark plant. The tip was accurate: The plant was two years behind schedule. It was relying on technology that requires a lot of energy and emits many pollutants, including greenhouse gases. And its process turned plastic waste into fossil fuels. There was no evidence plastic got recycled back into plastic.
That story led to another where Brightmark whistleblowers revealed fires, spills and other unsafe conditions at the plant. Next, I investigated proposed plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Those were not ultimately built, in part because local and national opposition followed in the wake of our scrutiny.
Between these reports for Inside Climate News, I wrote stories to provide larger context—from the toxic lifecycle of plastic to the efforts of 170 nations to reach an agreement on a plastics treaty.
If any city in the country could figure out how to make chemical recycling work, I figured it would be Houston, a global petrochemical hub. Indeed, a collaboration between the city of Houston, the oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil and other businesses was promising to recycle 90 percent of the city’s plastic waste. I went there and learned that plastic collected in the city as part of the collaboration wasn’t getting recycled after all. It was stockpiled at an open-air facility. Construction of a new sorting facility was behind schedule. And Exxon declined to disclose basic information about its Baytown chemical recycling facility to support its environmental claims.
In April 2024 the city expanded its drop-off program. By then, the facility stockpiling plastic waste had failed three fire safety inspections. I shared my reporting with CBS News and we began a formal collaboration. In August 2024, CBS produced a 22-minute documentary and shorter segments for both the morning and evening news. Our coverage went viral on social media and all over Texas.
As the global plastics treaty takes shape, industry is spending tens of millions of dollars on public relations campaigns around chemical recycling. Critics consider it to be greenwashing, at best. My goal as I report on this topic of global significance is to write deeply researched stories that explain what’s really happening and what’s at stake.
About This Story
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