This story is a partnership between Inside Climate News and CBS News.
HOUSTON—When the news crew showed up outside a waste-handling business that’s failed three fire safety inspections and has yet to gain state approval to store plastic, workers quickly closed a gate displaying a “no trespassing” sign.
Behind the gate, deliveries of hundreds of thousands of pounds of plastic waste from residents’ homes have piled up over the last year and a half. Satellite and drone images reveal bags, bottles and even a cooler spread about, some of the plastic heaped high in bales next to strewn cardboard and tall stacks of wooden pallets.
The expanding open-air pile at Wright Waste Management, on the edge of an office park 20 miles northwest of downtown Houston, awaits what the city of Houston and corporate partners including ExxonMobil call a new frontier in recycling—and critics describe as a sham.