Neil McQueen learned to surf as a Texas teenager, and it changed his life – eventually pulling him away from a career as a plastics engineer and into the fight to save the very waters that shaped him. Thanks to the way ocean currents loop through the Gulf, the Texas coast collects roughly 10 times more plastic debris than any other Gulf state, much of it spilling from the massive petrochemical complex that lines its shores.
In this episode of Sea Change, reporter Avery Thompson follows Neil from the surf off Mustang Island to the halls of the Texas Capitol to witness a personal reckoning with the plastics economy that helped build modern Texas—and one man’s determination to leave the ocean better than he found it.
To learn more about the citizen-led science project tracking pre-production plastics, called nurdles, check out the Nurdle Patrol. And for more about the Surfrider Foundation's work on the Texas coast, click here.
CREDITS
This episode was reported by Texas-based reporter Avery Thompson. It was edited by Carlyle Calhoun and Eve Abrams, with additional help from Johanna Zorn, Eva Tesfaye, and Michael McEwan. Carlyle Calhoun is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Jon Batiste, and sound design by Dennis Funk with help from Avery Thompson.
Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. Sea Change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
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TRANSCRIPT
ACT 1
NARRATION: On a sunny morning in April, I drive my car out to where concrete gives way to sand. Overhead, a squadron of pelicans flies into view, like some prehistoric air show, and then beneath them, an expanse of blue green water fills my windshield. That’s where I find Neil McQueen, parked only about 30 yards from the shoreline, removing a surfboard from his car’s roof rack.
Neil (Tape): “ this is really, it's a custom made surfboard I had made by a guy out in San Francisco out, and his name's Danny Hess and he's an amazing surfboard shaper…
NARRATION: With his flat brimmed baseball cap, Smith sunglasses, and board shorts, Neil looks every bit the surfer. Albeit one with a salt and pepper goatee and a few sun spots, hinting at the amount of time Neil’s spent catching waves.
Neil (Tape): And then it has a wood skin on top, which is poplar, so it’s a fast growing wood, so not only is it kind of a green board, but it looks really groovy and it surfs real well.
NARRATION: As an environmentalist Neil takes special care in choosing his surfing gear. So beyond having his eco friendly surfboard, he owns a wetsuit made out of limestone dust instead of neoprene, which he says is a known carcinogen. And waxes his board with a bar made of beeswax and coconut oil.
Scene tape: waxing board
NARRATION: But Neil’s activism efforts go well beyond being a conscientious consumer.
He’s also adopted a fairly unique pre-surfing ritual. So before hitting the waves, Neil and I walk back to the grassy dunes rising about two stories above the beach.
Neil (Tape): So a lot of times what I’ll do is I'll go up in the sand dunes. And I actually checked the surf out from up in the dunes and um, see if there, there's any trash up there to pick up. 'Cause it's so windy, a lot of stuff blows up to the sand dunes...
NARRATION: With both of us choosing to go barefoot to feel the soft sand under our feet, Neil warns me to watch where I walk.
Neil (Tape): You do have to be careful about potential rattlesnakes up in the dunes.
NARRATION: Yes, you heard right. He said rattlesnakes. Which might be the right time for me to explain that I am not in Southern California, or Waikiki, or Costa Rica—but Texas.
Avery (Tape): What’s this beach called?Neil (Tape): We call this North Packery. We’re on Mustang Island
NARRATION:Maybe this will come as some surprise to you, but there is indeed a surfing scene in Texas. A pretty robust one, actually,
Neil (Tape): Just across the other side of the bridge is North Padre Island
NARRATION: Particularly here on the narrow barrier islands along the state’s mid and southern coast,
Neil (Tape): So like those condos are North Padre
NARRATION: where people have been riding waves since the 1950s.
VINTAGE PADRE ISLAND COMMERCIAL: Off the Texas Coast in the Gulf of Mexico, a narrow island reaches 110 miles from Corpus Christi southward to Port Isabel. Mysterious, wild, beautiful Padre Island…
NARRATION: But one thing has changed dramatically since those first Texas surfers paddled out into the Gulf.
Neil (Tape): [Crinkling] There’s a nice sound for you. Here we have our plastic water bottle, very very typical
NARRATION: Lots and lots of plastic.
CARLYLE CALHOUN: That's Texas-based reporter Avery Thompson, alongside the Gulf surf, amid all that plastic trash. You’re listening to Sea Change. I’m Carlyle Calhoun. When you think of Texas, you might picture cowboys on dusty plains—or one of the state’s sprawling cities. But what we often forget is that Texas is also a coastal state, with one of the longest coastlines in the country. And that coastline is home to the largest plastics and petrochemical complex in North America. Unfortunately though, a concerning amount of plastic—from everyday consumer trash to the raw materials of the industry itself—ends up on the state’s shores.Today, Avery takes us to the coast to meet one surfer doing his part to stem the tide of plastic reaching his local waves. That’s coming up after the break.
Neil (Tape): So what happens is these bags move like tumbleweed up here until they get caught in vegetation of the sand dunes here. But this is so typical here.
NARRATION: When Neil McQueen first started surfing these breaks back in 1978, he wouldn’t see much plastic around. But these days, it’s everywhere. A landmark study published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin revealed that because of the specific way ocean currents loop through the Gulf, the Texas coast accumulates roughly ten times more plastic debris than the average of any other Gulf state.
Neil (Tape): Yet another plastic shopping bag, brought to you by Walmart.
NARRATION: So nearly everyday that Neil surfs here at Packery Channel, he climbs up into these dunes and picks up what he can—Hoping to stop the plastic trash from reaching the gulf waters where it causes untold harm.
Neil (Tape): There are days when you’re out in the water and it’s like a soup of plastic. A lot of the stuff has turtle bites taken out of it, especially bags, because they resemble jellyfish in the water. And turtles eat jellyfish. And so that, you know, that'll get stuck in their gut and it often kills them. So it's kind of, it's kind of heartbreaking to see this, you know?
NARRATION: But it’s not just plastic bags that resemble jellyfish that cause problems, because as resilient as plastic is, eventually, the sun, saltwater, and jostling of the tides will break much of it down into tiny fragments called microplastics–which growing research shows, is making its way into our own bodies through the foods we eat and water we drink.
Not to mention, it’s just a real buzzkill to see all this trash in an otherwise beautiful place.
And this isn’t just a Texas problem, because once the plastic reaches the sea water–it’s liable to go nearly anywhere. Which Neil demonstrates by squatting down and dragging his finger through the sand in the shape of continents and ocean currents.
Neil (Tape): and it goes in through that cut there between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba, and, and then it goes like this. It does a loop up into the Gulf of Mexico, and then it goes around Florida and becomes the Gulf Stream that goes up along the Atlantic seaboard. And currents are carrying trash throughout the world’s oceans.
NARRATION: What Neil’s talking about here is something scientists call thermohaline circulation. But in layman's terms, it’s the global system of ocean currents that moves heat and nutrients through the world’s seas.
And, now, increasingly, it’s also moving plastic.
A report by the World Economic Forum warned that if our current production trajectory holds, the world’s oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight by the year 2050.
And a staggering volume of plastic begins its journey right here along the Texas Gulf Coast—the epicenter of the North American plastics industry.
Neil (Tape): And this is not just a Texas issue, this is all over the world in the oceans and some places in Latin America and Asia it’s far worse.
Narration: So Neil isn’t just trying to clean up his local beach, he’s trying to do his part in what is quickly becoming a global plastic crisis.
AVERY (NARRATION): And what I came to learn from spending time here along Texas’s midcoast is that Neil doesn't do this alone. As if on cue, another figure trudges up through the soft sand, carrying a couple of shopping bags filled with plastic trash.
Neil (Tape): Morning, Mike. Hey, thanks for doing that. Really appreciate it. Mike: I do it all the time. I'm Mike Hughes. Neil (Tape): This is Avery
Narration: Mike Hughes is another veteran surfer here at Packery. and while he says he rarely paddles out these days, he still comes down on many mornings to clean his beloved beach.
Mike: I don’t surf as much as I used to. Neil (Tape): Just, just good days
Mike: maybe. If they’re not too big.
Avery: So mike is this a therapeutic activity for you?
Mike: Yeah
Avery: So how long would you be out here picking up plastic?
Mike: Maybe 30-60 minutes.
Avery: Nice, get your exercise and sunshine
Mike: Yeah…
Neil (Tape): And how much of what you see on the beach is plastic versus aluminum or glass or paper?
Mike: It's almost all plastic.
Narration: So Neil, Mike, and many local surfers like them aren't waiting around for the big, organized beach cleanups—the kind that get all the media attention. Instead, they’ve turned this quiet but equally important practice into an everyday routine—their daily offering to a place that has given them so much.
Neil (Tape): While I’m up here I’m looking out at the waves, seeing where they’re breaking and I feel like, you know, the Gulf's gonna reward me by my, you know, like you said, like karma. It's good karma.
NARRATION: And with that good karma in place, it was time for Neil and I to grab our boards and head out into the Gulf.
Avery (Tape): So what do you recommend for me? What’s my line here?
Neil (Tape): You see that guy over there all by himself, we’re going to go over there. And even then, just be judicious, but you know you’re going to have a leash, so you’ll be fine. Avery (Tape): So we’re staying away from this pack. Neil: We’re definitely staying away from the pack.
NARRATION:I don’t think any amount of good karma could have helped me out on the water that day–but when I wasn’t being tossed around by surprisingly forceful waves, being out on a surfboard provided me an amazing vantage point to watch Neil do his thing.
Avery (Tape): Okay, Neil’s up.
To see a competent surfer is to watch something akin to dancing.
Avery (Tape):Makes it look so easy.
There is a grace to it,
Avery (Tape): Still up.
and Neil had the fluid, unhurried style of someone who has spent a lifetime matching the rhythm of the sea.
Avery (Tape): Pretty smooth.
Despite the choppiness of the water caused by a steady onshore breeze, Neil knew exactly where to place himself, and when a waist high swell came along he popped up with ease and went tearing down the line.
In short: the guy rips.
Neil Tape: I got barrelled man. You didn’t see that? Did a cut back and barrelled to the left, and did a cut back. It was awesome.
AVERY (NARRATION): And in between his impressive rides, as Neil paddled back out, he would occasionally grab whatever trash he could find and stuff it into his boardshort pockets, or up the sleeve of his rashguard.
But picking up trash was only a tiny fraction of all the work Neil does to clean up his local surfspot.
Because as I would come to learn, Neil and I were surrounded by plastic–and most of it was too small to see, let alone stuff in your boardshorts.
All along the Texas coast, massive petrochemical plants are turning the lone star state’s abundant oil and natural gas reserves into raw plastic materials–the powders, flakes and pellets, otherwise known as nurdles–that eventually become our disposable goods.
And according to marine scientist Jace Tunnel, who is the director of community engagement at the Harte Research Institute and founder of Nurdle Patrol—a citizen-led science project tracking these pre-production plastics—an alarming amount of these raw materials end up in local waterways before ever being molded into anything.
JACE TUNNELL: Yeah, from the data that’s come in to NurdlePatrol.org it’s showing that Texas is the worst in the world, and there is some areas that is worst than others and it just so happens that manufacturing is where you find the highest concentrations. AVERY (NARRATION): And once again, those ocean currents come into play, because Neil’s beach is not only affected by nearby plastic production facilities, but even larger operations further north.
JACE TUNNELL: And once you get to Galveston Bay and Houston area, that’s really the mecca of plastic manufacturing in the country. And that’s the highest concentrations we’re finding in the country. And all those come out and they sweep down the Texas coast. So we believe that a lot of the nurdles we’re finding along the Texas coast are from Texas.
AVERY (NARRATION): So while Neil does his part each day to tidy up his local surf spot, he knows that it will take far more than just a daily trash pickup to make real structural change. For that to happen, he's got to trade his rashguard for a suit and tie, and head all the way up to Austin.
ACT 2
Texas Senator: “The Chair calls up Neil McQueen”
Neil: Yes sir.
NARRATION: It’s just after midnight, and inside the Texas State Capitol in Austin, the air is stale and the fluorescent lights are humming. Neil has been hanging around the country’s largest state capitol for the last 14 hours, waiting for his chance to address an already tired committee.
Neil (Tape): “Alright, committee members, I’m with the coastal bend chapter of the Surfrider foundation our members value clean bays, beaches and gulfwaters. The last time I spoke to you it was in favor of HB2048 for a beverage container recycling program….
NARRATION: To the lawmakers looking down from the dais, Neil McQueen might look like just another frustrated coastal resident who drove up to Austin to complain about beach trash.
But they soon realize Neil speaks the precise, technical language of the industry—
Neil (Tape): TECQ hasn’t made any rule changes for discharges of their preproduction plastics in their rulemaking process and they need direction from the legislature.
NARRATION: Because it turns out that at one time in his life, Neil McQueen was a part of the very engine he is now fighting to rein in.
NEIL MCQUEEN: I also should mention that I was once an engineer in the plastics industry. So a few years outta college, I, I started working for a company in Houston and it was called Quasite, and it was a subsidiary area of Shell. Um, and we made all kinds of highway products and utility products very strong with fiberglass cloth in them. Um, but it was plastic.
NARRATION: So this isn’t just the story of a Texas surfer tidying up his own beach—it’s the story of a former plastics engineer reckoning with his past.
::MUSICNEIL MCQUEEN: I mean hindsight is 20/20, I do regret in some respects you know being a part of that machine that created all that stuff and put it out into the world but now I know better and going forward I’m going to try and do my part.
::Music Interlude::
NARRATION: To understand how Neil ended up inside that machine, you have to go back to the beginning. Neil McQueen was born into an oil family. His dad was an engineer in the oil fields, and his older brother worked the rigs—albeit not in Texas. Early on, they were way up in Edmonton, Canada—about as far from a surfable wave as you can get on this continent.
NEIL MCQUEEN: And I remember, you know, I got to go skiing at Jasper. I was a little kid, I think it was four years old, couldn't even stop or turn. I just, we skied down into a snowbank at the end of the run, and then they would, my brother or sister or my mom would come pull me out and we'd go back up the lift.
NARRATION: But when Neil was six years old, his dad got a job in the then booming oil region of Texas. So the family packed up their life in Canada and headed south.
NEIL MCQUEEN: We came in August. And this is back when you saw the exterior stairway down out of the plane. I remember walking—six years old—and being hit by this blast of hot air. I’d never experienced anything like it. We thought it was maybe heat from the jet or something like that, but then we walked into the airport and it didn’t get much better. It took us about two weeks to acclimate and actually be able to breathe and go outside.
NARRATION: Neil’s family settled in Houston, where the oil industry provided them with a nice suburban lifestyle with green lawns and a community pool. And slowly they adapted to the culture of Texas. But it was in high school that Neil’s relationship with Texas dramatically changed.
NEIL MCQUEEN: I was, I was like 17. I went down to Galveston with a buddy and we rented surfboards and we went out in dribbling little waves and I jumped up on the surfboard, you know, and was just felt this, this joy at, at the sensation of the ocean pushing you along, um, gliding on the surface of the water. And I actually fell down one time and the board came slinging back at me and it hit me in the face and cut my, cut my cheek open.
One of the fins hit me and I didn't care. Um, and I thought, man, I gotta do this. This is cool.
NARRATION: From then on, every chance Neil got, he was back in the water of the Gulf…He learned to read the tides and duck under breaking waves. He practiced his cutbacks, and learned to cross-step out to the nose.
And along the way, he became part of a small but vibrant surf scene here on the Gulf.NEIL MCQUEEN: Which can kind of create its own problems when it gets too crowded. But they’re also tenacious. Because you have to put up with weather conditions that change fast—sometimes extreme weather. It’s not unusual during hurricane evacuations to see everyone driving north... and the surfers heading south. But overall, a really great group of people. I’ve got a lot of great friends at the beach.”
NARRATION: But as the years passed, that tight-knit surf subculture wasn't the only thing growing along the Gulf. All around him, Neil could see the rapid blossoming of what was quickly becoming a global petrochemical empire, expanding from oil and gas into the production of raw plastics.
And Neil says, in the 1980s, if you were a young man growing up in Houston, you didn't fight that machine. Neil fell right in line, heading off to study engineering at Texas A&M, and then spending his summers chasing high-risk, high-paying cash out in the Texas oil fields.
NEIL MCQUEEN: I worked on, wells, you know, rigs anyway from Rivera down by Kingsville all the way over to Alabama. I was the worm, which is the youngest guy, least experienced guy on the rig. And I worked lead tongs, which is a really intense job at times. I'm really pleased I've got all my fingers.
NARRATION: And anytime Neil wasn’t working a grueling shift on the rigs, he’d get himself right back to the water. It was a single-minded obsession that his dad—who had risen through the ranks to become a high-level corporate oil executive—never fully understood.
NEIL MCQUEEN: My dad didn’t have many hobbies or anything like that–he liked to read books and work, haha. I remember him saying surfers are weird because we didn’t have that work ethic that his generation would have.
NARRATION: To Neil’s father, the Gulf Coast was a grid of assets to Neil, it was a sanctuary.
NEIL MCQUEEN: Surfing is kind of a spiritual thing, there’s a deep connection with nature. You’re looking at waves and trying to figure out which ones are the best ones to catch and how to position yourself and everything. And you’re just in this completely different world and for many people I know it’s kind of like their church.
Narration: But when graduation arrived and Neil walked off the stage at Texas A&M with an engineering degree, those two worlds collided.
He needed a job, and it turned out the hours he'd spent repairing his broken surfboards had given him the exact technical skillset a Houston plastics company was looking for.
NEIL MCQUEEN: And they wanted somebody who knew woodworking and fiberglass and I, I had fixed surfboards and things with fiberglass. And so I answered the ad so I was, I was making molds out of wood to make these prototypes and test products with – at a plastics company.
NARRATION: With our current understanding of plastic’s problems, I think it can be hard for us to remember just how exciting plastic was back in this era.
Archival Commercial: Today there are materials that lockout harmful contaminants and reduce spoilage, keeping us safe and the food we eat fresh. Plastics make it possible, so now the rest is history.
Plastics were making hospitals safer, they were helping NASA get astronauts to the moon, and they were the center of attention at Tupperware parties happening all over the country.
In the 1967 movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s character is given just one word of advice for his future:
The Graduate: Plastics!
So with his background in engineering and a fascination with chemistry, it was no wonder that Neil McQueen found himself just as swept up in the promise of plastic.
NEIL MCQUEEN: During lunchtime, I would sit down and read Society of Plastics Industry magazines on the latest stuff. I just found the chemistry to be interesting, and there was really no lack of what things you could make out of plastics. So it was fascinating from that perspective.
NARRATION: But for all the excitement surrounding plastic's promise, Neil says there was a systemic ambivalence about what it left behind. Chemical engineers were focused on the front end of production, while almost no one was thinking about its waste. And that included where Neil worked.
NEIL MCQUEEN: And this company had literally piles of things out in the yard, as many factories do, that they really didn't know how to deal with stuff, literally dripping barrels of stuff piled up in places, and boxes of containers of chemicals, I kind of call them Pandora's box. You didn't know if this stuff is gonna explode on you, it had been sitting out there in 20 years in the heat.
NARRATION: But Neil’s company was not the exception to the rule. Over the course of the late seventies and eighties, multi-billion-dollar petrochemical plants aggressively colonized the estuaries and bayous stretching from Corpus Christi up to Houston. Neil says nearly every one of those facilities cut corners when it came to keeping their waste contained.
NEIL MCQUEEN: It's a known fact that when it rains, rain washes all kinds of chemicals and materials off of industrial sites. They go into the storm drain systems, and then they end up going into creeks, bayous, bays, rivers, and lakes.
NARRATION: For Neil, the calculation was simple. The industrial footprint of his career was directly colliding with the place he loved most.
NEIL MCQUEEN: I’ve had dolphins surf beside me in waves, I’ve had them come up and look at me, turn on their side and look at me while I’m sitting on my board, so you do get kind of a connection to these other animals out there and when you see the harm we’re doing to other animals out there, it hurts.
NARRATION: Driven by that hurt, Neil made a choice. He walked away from the manufacturing side of plastics and pivoted into the unglamorous world of environmental compliance and consulting—steering companies from the inside out, helping them manage their waste and coaxing them to comply with what few regulations the state of Texas actually put on the books.
But as Neil saw it, it wasn't enough to just do less harm while on the clock. With global plastic rapidly piling up along the coast, his home break remained under threat. And so, Neil the surfer soon became Neil the activist.
He joined the Coastal Bend chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, a network of surfers fighting to protect America’s waters, and eventually rising to become the chapter's vice chair. And soon, the once-quiet engineer who used to read plastic industry magazines on his lunch break was thrust into the local media spotlight—warning anyone who would listen about the dangers of an industry and a material left unchecked.
::News Clips
NARRATION: With his media profile growing, Neil was stepping onto a much larger stage—and facing a massive challenge. He wasn't just cleaning up local beaches anymore; he was openly confronting the economic crown jewels of the Texas coast. And having spent his early career inside those very systems, he understood the scale of the machine he was taking on.
NEIL MCQUEEN: There is a lot of money in the petrochemical industry, and in Texas, there is a lot of influence by the petrochemical industry. So the predominant voices in the state are supportive of that industry. You know, and I get that that's some people's bread and butter. I understand that.
NARRATION: Pushing against an industry that essentially holds the keys to the state economy meant bracing for a long, grueling battle against the biggest financial engine in Texas. But just as Neil was squaring up for that fight, he received a completely unlikely vote of confidence.
And it came from an assisted living facility in Fort Worth.
NARRATION: By the time Neil’s father reached his late eighties, he was suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease. As the elder oilman sat in his room, stripped of the daily hustle, a lifetime of absolute certainties began to soften into reflection.
NEIL MCQUEEN: You know we were watching a documentary and this was pretty early on where the awareness of climate change was beginning to come on and my dad was a smart guy and he appreciated science and he acknowledged on some level that the products of his career had created climate change and other types of pollution and said, you know I think my generation has caused some pretty big problems for you guys and its up to you guys to fix it. Avery: Did it come as a surprise for you to hear him say that?
Neil: Yeah, it did surprise me to hear it a little bit, his statement about his generation messing things up. You know, and i still know people who work in the oil industry, I have good friends in the oil industry that won’t admit that to this day, anyway it was vindicating on some level that he acknowledged that…it felt good.
NARRATION: By this point, Neil was already decades deep into his advocacy. So his father’s words didn’t alter his direction. But they offered something rarer: proof that even the most unyielding corporate minds could change. It didn't rewrite his map, but it gave him the momentum he would need for where he was heading next. Because the fight wasn't just on the beaches anymore. It was moving to the halls of power.
Which brings us back to the state Capitol where, in the wee hours of the morning, Neil is voicing his support for HB 4028—a legislative measure that would require Texas’s environmental regulatory agency, TCEQ, to monitor spills of preproduction plastics and mandate environmental audits at manufacturing facilities.
Neil (in tape): TCEQ hasn’t made any changes for discharges for preproduction plastics in their rulemaking process and they need direction from the legislature.
NARRATION: This is a tough sell.
NEIL MCQUEEN: Texas is a difficult place because the petrochemical industry has a huge amount of influence, and they have a lot of money to back up that influence. But sometimes, when you feel opposition from what I call the other team, that means you’re doing something right.
NARRATION: To face down that opposition, Neil brings a tactical advantage to the microphone. He walks into the room with a pure Texas pedigree and a career’s worth of internal industry wisdom.
NEIL MCQUEEN: You know, I can wear an Aggie ring and I can say I’ve worked on the floor of a drilling rig, I’ve tripped pipe, so I understand the oil and gas culture. I was also an engineer in a plastics factory.
NARRATION: Underneath Neil's polite, engineering demeanor is a calm resolve that comes from years of facing down a completely different kind of force.
NEIL MCQUEEN: Being a surfer and going out into the ocean, and I’ve been doing this for quite a while, So you're up against a force that's much more powerful than you. you learn a lot about yourself. Because I've been in tough situations in the ocean. I've had a couple very scary moments in the ocean where I thought, oops, I messed up here. But I got through that, I got strength through that. So when we go into the Texas Capitol or city hall or you know, anywhere, I always keep that in mind. You know what, like these are elected officials and they deserve respect and everything like that, but I’m not afraid of them.
Neil (Tape): Lastly, I’ve worked as a plant engineer and environmental consultant for plastics manufacturers and I’ve done stormwater monitoring myself at a variety of facilities and based on my experience I can tell you that the monitoring required by the bill is not excessive.
Senator: Thank you for your testimony.
AVERY (NARRATION): But shortly after Neil stepped away from the microphone, the committee heard from the exact machine he was trying to rein in. A representative from the Texas Chemistry Council took the floor. As the primary lobbying arm for the state's petrochemical industry, the Council represents billions of dollars in corporate revenue—and they came ready to defend the status quo.
TEXAS CHEMISTRY COUNCIL REP [TAPE]: Logan Harold, General Council of Texas Chemistry Council respectfully opposing HB4028 for three reasons, first HB4028 disrupts the existing waste class framework….
AVERY (NARRATION): In the halls of political power, a watertight argument is rarely a match for a well-funded one.
TEXAS CHEMISTRY COUNCIL REP [TAPE]: Third, industry is already addressing the issue of resin management.
Narration: Despite all of Neil’s efforts, his fearlessness, and his engineering expertise, the political math in Austin remained unyielding.
In the end, neither of the plastic pollution bills he supported that session passed.But Neil doesn’t see these dead ends as total failures—he sees them as incremental progress.
NEIL MCQUEEN: The bill that, that I worked on, the pre-production plastic pollution bill We got a hearing, so we were able to testify and that's on record and everything, but then it died in, in the committee and the other one I helped to support was a bill for a statewide beverage container recycling program. that bill actually got really far in this last legislative session. It made it all the way to the floor at the very end of the session so that there wasn't time to. To, for it to be debated. But that's farther than that Bill's ever gone before.
NARRATION: When you talk to surfers along the Gulf, they’ll tell you that catching waves in Texas is not for the faint of heart. You have to deal with brutal heat, unpredictable currents, stingrays, and messy, wind-chopped water. To be a Texas surfer, you have to really, truly want it.
And you could say that same rule applies to environmental advocacy.
Neils says, If you're looking for clean, easy victories, you're in the wrong state. You have to be willing to paddle out, day after day, knowing you’re going to take a beating, just for the chance to catch that one good swell.
NEIL MCQUEEN (INTERVIEW 2 - 58:39):I try not to get overwhelmed by the overall situation and there have been times that I’m banging my head against the wall and my wife asks me why do you do this to yourself? You know, and somebody’s gotta do it. And sometimes it is hard to stay optimistic, but falling back to surfing, when you want to catch waves you have to paddle out and against waves, you have to paddle under waves. So you learn determination.
I was talking yesterday, I spoke at a class at Texas A&M and you know I told them that when I check out from here I want the positive versus the negative columns, I want to be in the positive column and I want to think that my existence has been a positive thing on this planet.
NARRATION: So after his unsuccessful attempts in Austin, Neil doesn’t wave the white flag, he simply moves on to his next tactic.
NARRATION: It’s a blistering day in early June, and Neil and a group of volunteers are out on San Jose Island—a privately owned, undeveloped barrier island just across the shipping channel from Port Aransas. Because there's no municipality here to clean the beach, decades' worth of global consumer plastic has accumulated along its shores.
Led by Neil, volunteers of all ages pick up trash along the beach and in between the crevices of a twelve-hundred-foot long stone jetty that sticks out into the channel like a giant net.
NEIL MCQUEEN [FIELD TAPE]: As you can see by all the bags of trash that have already been collected, there's no shortage of stuff. And what you're hearing right there is guys dragging plastic bottles on ropes because there's too many to put in bags.
AVERY [FIELD TAPE]: And how many people do you have out here?
NEIL MCQUEEN [FIELD TAPE]: I’m going to estimate about fifty. Which is a great, great turnout. We were hoping for forty or fifty, so it's fantastic.
NARRATION: "Fantastic" is a word rarely uttered by environmental advocates in Texas.
But as Neil watches a new generation of kids crawl over the rocks, he sees their effort and enthusiasm as a celebratory counterweight to the political stagnation in Austin.
NEIL MCQUEEN [FIELD TAPE]: And part of this is we're cleaning this up, but the other part is that it also increases awareness. For the volunteers, once you see this, it really sticks with you. And then when you go to the grocery store or when you're buying products or things like that, you start realizing, "oh this is the same stuff I was seeing in the jetties or on the beach, so hmm, maybe I can do this another way.:
NARRATION: After three hours in the midday sun, the volunteers lug their bags of trash to the ferry dock and load it onto the boat.
NEIL MCQUEEN [FIELD TAPE]: All the way back with the trash. NARRATION: Back on the mainland, Neil will weigh each and every one of these bags. Ever the engineer, this isn’t just waste to him—it’s data he can use to highlight the severity of the plastic crisis to anyone who will listen.
NEIL MCQUEEN [FIELD TAPE]:: Pile it high, pile the trash up!
NARRATION: In surfing, most time isn’t spent standing up on the board. It’s spent sitting out on the open water, staring back at the horizon, waiting for a single rideable wave that here in Texas might take hours to arrive.
Neil knows he can’t singlehandedly stop what washes up on his shore. But years in the water have taught him that in Texas, you work with the waves you're given.
And today, as the last bag of trash is heaved up onto the ferry boat, a big smile creeps across Neil’s face.
NEIL MCQUEEN [FIELD TAPE]: Wooh, we did this!
NARRATION: In the McQueen ledger, today will go down as one for the positive column.
