HOUSTON – As we know plastics are essential to our everyday life, but some plastics are hard to recycle and end up in landfills polluting our environment.
ExxonMobil has developed a way to address plastic waste through what’s called advanced recycling. The effort takes hard-to-recycle used plastics like, used garbage bags, oil jugs, bubble-wrap packages, cereal bags, PPE, ice bags, dog food bags and much, and much more, breaks them down and recycles them, which contributes to what is known as a circular economy.
It’s the largest advanced recycling facility in North America and it’s in our backyard. Some 80 million pounds of hard-to-recycle used plastics are broken down and transformed into raw materials that will become new products at Baytown’s integrated manufacturing complex.
The process begins with you, the consumer at home.
When you’re finished with your favorite bag of chips, instead of throwing it away in the trash, depending on where you live, you will be able to throw it in the bin to be recycled.
Natalie Martinez is ExxonMobil North America Advanced Recycling Commercial Manager.
“So, my favorite things to think about with hard-to-recycle plastics are things like potato chip bags, cereal bags, or lube oil bottles from when you change the oil in your car,” Martinez said. “The good thing is that you don’t really have to clean them, a little bit of chip residue is okay, it’s something that we can handle.”
Martinez oversees the operation that is already having a great impact on the Houston community.
“In Kingwood, we’ve just started a program where residents can bring all of their plastic, all mixed together, to one place where we will then collect it, sort through that, and recycle those plastics using the right technology for the type of plastic,” explained Martinez.
Once collected, the plastics are brought to PSC Warehouse-- one of a handful of ExxonMobil’s partners that make up the Houston recycling collaboration. This is where the plastics are broken down and loaded onto a truck destined for new beginnings at ExxonMobil’s facility in Baytown.
“That molecule would go into our unit where it’s broken down into its molecular level, and that molecule would end up becoming new plastic,” Martinez said. “I would say, it helps solves two problems. The first is how do we do better at managing the plastic waste that’s created, instead of putting plastic in a garbage bag and it going to landfills. How can we bring back that plastic and recycle it and make new plastic out of it? The other part of it is consumer demand and our customers’ demand. When they buy a plastic product off the shelf, they want to know it’s sustainable. This is a huge game changer for the industry, but I would say for society in general. When we started on this project we had a vision, and the most important thing was that it wasn’t just a science project. We wanted it to be meaningful. We wanted it to bring a solution that has scale, that could handle large amounts of plastic and be meaningful to society. And the thing that’s really exciting is that this is just the start.”
ExxonMobil is working with the City of Houston and others to expand this program and hopes to process one-billion pounds of hard-to-recycle plastics by 2026.
How do you get this program in your neighborhood? Advocate. Reach out to your local representatives, chat with your neighbors, talk to your landlord.
In the program in Kingwood, residents can bring their hard-to-recycle used plastics to Kingwood Recycling Center at Kingwood Metro Transit Center on Saturdays and Sundays between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.