Mess With Texas

We had a full day driving from Tennessee to western Texas and the heat only got worse. So when we arrived in Marshall to film another factory sequence, we knew we’d be in for a long day.



Tie-Tek is a recycling company that truly recycles. They take consumer and industrial plastic waste and turn it into railroad ties.



Why railroad ties?



Well, it seems the USA alone replaces more than 12 million wooden railroad ties every year. What’s worse, the wood is often treated with creosote, a nasty chemical preservative that leeches into the environment.



Tie-Tek’s plastic alternative can last longer and is apparently benign to the environment. The uniform dimensions of a rail-tie also make it a one-mould process and thus commercially viable.



Steve showed us around the plant where they take the waste plastic, mulch it up, heat the mixture, press it into a mould, cool it off in a futuristic bath and stack them for shipping.



Severely malnourished and dehydrated, Cryptic Moth sped off to Houston to meet Henry, Tie-Tek’s president. As luck would have it, a massive thunderstorm erupted just as we entered the city limits. Within minutes Henry calls us to say his plant – and the road surrounding the plant – is flooding. (Click link below for an over-dramatized video enactment)

Rain%20in%20Houston.wmv

We headed for higher ground.



The next morning, we met Henry in a temporary trailer next to his new processing facility. Henry is a tall, lean man who wears glasses. He keeps his long hair pulled back in a pony tail and speaks with conviction. We interview Henry in front of his raw material depot.



After working for many years as a chemical engineer, Henry wanted to build a profitable business that could serve a function and be beneficial to the environment, in that order. His business has since grown exponentially, selling his ties around the world. Henry boasts his company has saved millions of trees from ending up as wooden rectangles and how his product is infinitely recyclable. That's because a retiring Tie-Tek can simply be put back into the process to be born anew.



We thanked Henry for his time and once again, hauled-butt to the next shoot.



The Busbees live on a remote farm 2 hours north of Houston. Dr. Dave is a geneticist and toxicologist studying the health effects of plasticizers. Plasticizers are basically the additives that make plastic soft and flexible and are found in pretty much everything – from our food packaging to our clothes to our car’s interior. Dr. Dave isolates these plasticizers – some called pthalates – and exposes them to different genes.



And he has been shocked by what he’s found. Every chemical has altered gene expressions vital for human development – from the brain to reproductive organs. So what does this mean? No one knows. Dr. Dave is one of a few studying these chemicals that are already commonly found in waterways and are prevalent in most of our bodies – including pregnant women. More research is definitely needed but Dr. Dave isn’t hopeful.



It was a long, sobering interview. To our delight, our guests treated the Cryptic Moth team to a home-cooked meal that would bring tears to the eyes of any worn-out traveler. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the southern hospitality.



They even invited us to stay the night but we had to be on the West Coast in a few days and some 1200 miles of desert lay in our way.



Out.

I+G