Plastics

Once a month for nearly two years, Evan Clark, the Waterkeeper at Three Rivers Waterkeeper, a water quality advocacy organization based in Pittsburgh, has traveled by boat along the Ohio River to Shell’s enormous new plastics plant in Beaver County.  This facility is a cracker plant, using ethane from fracked gas to make ethylene and […]

California chemical engineer Jan Dell knows from her own research when packages lie. She has seen too many containers stamped with “the chasing arrow” crest—a curvy three-arrow stamp meant to indicate an item can be recycled—tossed or refused by reliable recycling centers.  She’s used electronic trackers to challenge a Houston recycling program, document how plastic […]