Author: /u/PurrfectPalsRescue

I’d love to hear from people with credible, resourced information about whether soft plastics that are collected at HEB (or anywhere else that claims to recycle bags) is really just ending up in overseas landfills or the ocean.

I am in no way a conspiracy theorist and have been an avid recycler for 40 years. I was really excited when I learned that plastic recycling bins at grocery stores will accept any clean plastics like the kind that surrounds multi-packs of toilet paper and other bulky goods. I only discovered this by contacting the Houston-based company HEB uses, whose web address was printed on the bins at the front of the store. I still had my doubts because why is that information not widely communicated by the cities’ solid waste services or HEB, or by that third party company? The primary reason I contacted them in the first place was because the uninformative signage showed what they don’t accept, but didn’t list what they do accept.

I work for HEB and know for a fact that they still collect, separate and send off this plastic from every store. What I don’t know is whether it REALLY gets shipped off to the company in Houston, and if so what do they do with it from there? Do they melt it down and sell off the rendered plastic? Do they sell it as is to some Asian country that alleges to break it down and reuse the plastic? Or is it all just dumped somewhere?

Again, I would appreciate having factual, research-based reports of this purported recycling stream and whether it’s really just a sham operation.