A new report by an at-large Houston City Council member criticizes the form of “advanced” or “chemical recycling” of plastics known as pyrolysis, a controversial method city officials are backing through a partnership with ExxonMobil.

The report from Councilmember Letitia Plummer, who is elected by voters across the city, warns that this technology, which ExxonMobil has integrated into its giant Baytown petrochemical complex along the Houston Ship Channel, “continues to encourage fossil fuel extraction while generating hazardous emissions.” 

The report echoes other findings and a California lawsuit that only a small percentage of plastic that enters the pyrolysis process results in reusable plastic materials, specifically propylene and ethylene. The large majority “becomes various chemical byproducts, many of which are burned as fuel, leading to further greenhouse gas emissions,” the report said.

Pyrolysis is a form of chemical processing touted by the chemical industry as a solution to a global plastic waste problem. It typically relies on extreme heat and pressure in an oxygen-free environment to produce oil and gases that can become feedstocks for petrochemical products, including plastics and fuel. Environmental groups view it as tantamount to incineration, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not recognize turning plastic waste into fuel as recycling.

Plummer recommends the city reconsider its backing of pyrolysis and focus on reducing reliance on single-use plastics—the products used once and thrown away—while investing more in traditional recycling technologies that do not rely on chemical processing.

Her report represents the first detailed expression of concern from a City Council member about the direction of Houston’s plastic recycling program since Houston’s then-mayor Sylvester Turner signed on to a public-private partnership in January 2022 called the Houston Recycling Collaboration. 

Its partners envisioned chemical processing to help the city go from recycling less than 10 percent of plastic waste to 90 percent. They said Houston, the country’s fourth-largest city, could become a national model. But critics locally and nationally, including California Attorney General Rob Bonta, have described chemical recycling as a polluting sham.

Jennifer Hadayia, executive director of the environmental nonprofit Air Alliance Houston, cheered the councilmember’s report.

“We’re very excited about this development—the first real movement we’ve seen from the City to take a serious look” at chemical recycling and the partnership, she said in an email. 

Air Alliance Houston, Hadayia said in an interview, has been reaching out to council members, including Plummer. Hadayia said her team found that many of the council members were unaware of the city’s January 2022 memorandum of understanding that formed the recycling collaboration, which includes Exxon, petrochemical giant LyondellBasell and Cyclyx, a company partly owned by Exxon and LyondellBasell that is working to establish plastic sorting facilities.

As the report circulates among some council members and key officials within the administration of current Mayor John Whitmire, some might find the report and the city’s support for chemical recycling to be “shocking,” she said. The city’s contribution includes recycling drop-off locations around Houston.

The Houston mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Plummer’s report. Mark Wilfalk, director of the Houston Solid Waste Management Department, said in a statement: “While we agree with many of the recommendations provided in the report (such as reducing the production and use of plastics, localizing solutions to reduce plastic waste, and improving mechanical recycling) we also remain interested in exploring alternative concepts designed to repurpose the use of solid waste commodities traditionally destined for landfill disposal.”

Lauren Kight, an Exxon spokeswoman, said in an email that chemical recycling “is a proven technology that can be used around the world to improve recycling rates and support a more circular economy.” 

Many plastic products cannot be easily recycled through traditional methods, she said. “Advanced recycling expands the list of products that can be collected, sorted and recycled. We’d be happy to work with local, state or federal governments on policies that help reduce plastic waste.”

Inside Climate News began investigating the recycling collaboration, the execution of its recycling efforts and a new Exxon chemical recycling facility in 2023, after volunteers with the environmental group Last Beach Cleanup, using electronic tracking devices, found that plastic waste collected for the collaboration wasn’t being recycled. Instead, it was piling up outdoors at a private waste management business, awaiting a yet-to-be-constructed sorting facility planned elsewhere in the region.

A joint reporting project between Inside Climate News and CBS News published and broadcast in August found that the waste collected for the collaboration was still stacking up at the waste management business, despite it failing three fire safety inspections. The company at the time had also not obtained all its required fire operational permits, including those for handling “hazardous materials” and “miscellaneous combustible storage.” Plastic is highly flammable and plastic recycling facilities frequently catch fire.

Munira Bangee, Plummer’s chief of staff, said the councilwoman had seen the reporting and had met with Air Alliance Houston. 

“We’ve been paying attention,” Bangee said. “We pulled the report together for the administration to understand the concerns that Councilwoman Plummer has. What we know is all that plastic is just sitting somewhere.”

She also said Plummer would like to know more about the city’s recycling collaboration and the agreement behind it, known as an MOU. “Councilwoman Plummer is requesting a meeting with the director of solid waste to understand more about this MOU and to understand how the city is doing its recycling,” she said.

Plummer supports mechanical recycling, Bangee said. Typically, mechanical recycling involves sorting, cleaning, shredding and molding waste plastic into new plastic products. It also has limitations: Plastics can be recycled this way a limited number of times, for instance, and the process can produce microplastic pollution.

A view of the ExxonMobil Baytown petrochemical complex near Houston, where the company has added a chemical recycling facility for waste plastic. Credit: Carlos Chavez/CBS News

Exxon’s chemical recycling ambitions and practices, including at its Baytown operations, also drew attention from the California attorney general. In late September, alleging decades of lies, Bonta sued Exxon over plastic pollution in California. It was the first lawsuit in which a state has gone after a big plastics manufacturer for environmental harm.

Bonta claimed the company “deceived Californians for almost half a century by promising that recycling could and would solve the ever-growing plastic waste crisis,” while alleging that Exxon’s new claims around “chemical” recycling at its Baytown plant were more of the same. The lawsuit cited investigative reporting from Inside Climate News and a raft of other sources, including internal company documents.

The company markets its Baytown plant as “advanced” recycling that produces “certified circular plastics,” using accounting methods that suggest those recycled plastics contain significant amounts of recycled polymers, the lawsuit claims. But they don’t, according to the lawsuit. 

“ExxonMobil is correct that its ‘certified circular polymers’ are, in fact, identical to its virgin polymers. But this is not because co-processing magically transforms plastic waste into virgin-like plastics. They are identical because … ExxonMobil’s ‘certified circular polymers’ actually contain virtually no waste plastic,” the lawsuit alleges.

Marketing materials give the impression that Exxon is able to recycle all plastic waste through these techniques, the lawsuit alleges. But in fact, the company’s chemical recycling facility in Baytown has a yield of only 8 percent, the lawsuit claims.

In response to the lawsuit, Exxon blamed California for its own recycling failures and praised chemical recycling.

“For decades, California officials have known their recycling system isn’t effective,” the company said. “They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills. The first step would be to acknowledge what their counterparts across the U.S. know: advanced recycling works. To date, we’ve processed more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste into usable raw materials, keeping it out of landfills.”

The company has said it has a goal of processing 1 billion pounds by 2027, an amount that the California lawsuit describes as “one percent or less” of the company’s plastic production capacity.

Plummer’s report details serious reservations about chemical recycling. Among its main points: 

• Pyrolysis perpetuates fossil fuel extraction and consumption rather than reducing it, undermining the industry’s claims that it supports a circular plastic economy. More of the plastic processed at Baytown is turned into fuel or other chemicals than new plastic, the report notes.
• The most effective way to reduce plastic waste is to limit its production in the first place. Houston and other municipalities should adopt strategies aimed at reducing plastic consumption, particularly single-use plastics.
• Houston should expand its mechanical recycling capabilities and hold companies accountable for pollution generated by chemical recycling.
• The city needs to protect low-income and marginalized communities near plastics manufacturing and recycling plants from pollution and give them a voice in waste management and recycling policy decisions.

Air Alliance Houston’s Hadayia said she hoped the City Council will also scrutinize the marketing around the city’s recycling collaboration, which she said has given the impression that plastic waste dropped off as part of the program is actually being recycled.

“We have been trying for more than a year to give this the attention it deserves,” Hadayia said. “We are glad to see this report making its way around the council.”

This story was updated Dec. 13, 2024, with a statement from the Houston Solid Waste Management Department.

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James Bruggers covers the U.S. Southeast, part of Inside Climate News’ National Environment Reporting Network. He previously covered energy and the environment for Louisville’s Courier Journal, where he worked as a correspondent for USA Today and was a member of the USA Today Network environment team. Before moving to Kentucky in 1999, Bruggers worked as a journalist in Montana, Alaska, Washington and California. Bruggers’ work has won numerous recognitions, including best beat reporting, Society of Environmental Journalists, and the National Press Foundation’s Thomas Stokes Award for energy reporting. He served on the board of directors of the SEJ for 13 years, including two years as president. He lives in Louisville with his wife, Christine Bruggers.