SHAMROCK, Texas — A company founded in Wyoming less than a year ago won a six-figure contract to dispose of more than 7,000 pallets of “inventory” that included hand sanitizer containing a high concentration of ethyl alcohol and some contaminated with methanol.
And although the contractor told a federal court that the products would probably be destroyed in Mexico, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality discovered them developing an apparent disposal site in the Texas Panhandle near the Oklahoma border.
4e Brands Northamerica filed an emergency motion on May 31, asking the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Laredo Division, to approve a “destruction and recycling proposal” that the company claimed represented “the most cost-effective, efficient and safest destruction process available.”
4e also asked the court for permission to start the destruction process with its proposed “recycling vendor”: Latitude Liquids, which submitted “the most favorable bid.”
Latitude “provides the services of unpacking and recycling methanol- and ethanol-based hand sanitizer,” 4e told the court.
“This solution effectively removes expired and unsellable hand sanitizer from the market through socially responsible methods.” The methanol is “typically utilized in biofuels,” 4e wrote.
According to the TCEQ, when 4e filed for bankruptcy on Feb. 22, it had 7,402 pallets of inventory that included hand sanitizer which was recalled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “due to the presence of methanol in the product.”
The pallets were stored in seven warehouses in Fort Worth, Laredo and Conroe, Texas, and in Indianapolis, Indiana, a court document shows.
By Sept. 30, the TCEQ told the court, 4e had sent approximately 2,900 pallets of hand sanitizer from warehouses in Indiana and Texas to Latitude Liquids for disposal at “Latitude’s destruction facilities” in Oklahoma and Texas. The specific location of those disposal sites is not listed in the court records.
It was unknown how much sanitizer remained in Fort Worth after a fire which broke out the night of Oct. 6 in a commercial warehouse that was filled with pallets of the alcohol-based product and burned for more than a week. Firefighters were still on the scene 11 days later.
Numerous bottles of hand sanitizer were washed into Fort Worth storm drains, littering the Trinity River and its banks. Dozens of dead fish were found floating in the river nearly two miles from the burned warehouse.
4e told the bankruptcy court that by Sept. 30, all of the company’s inventory that had been moved for destruction was in Texas. However, the TCEQ indicated in an Oct. 21 document that 4e may have some hand sanitizer still stored in Indiana.
Illegal disposal site discovered in Texas
On Oct. 6, the sheriff’s office in Wheeler County – at the eastern edge of the Texas Panhandle, abutting Beckham and Rogers Mills counties in Oklahoma – contacted the TCEQ office in Amarillo, raising concerns about shipments of palletized hand sanitizer that were received and stored at an unimproved site in Shamrock, Texas.
TCEQ investigators visited the site four times in October and found pallets of Blumen brand hand sanitizer pulled from store shelves and warehouses after the FDA recall. Guy Wilkins, the TCEQ’s waste/water section manager, said he saw “approximately 1,100 shrink-wrapped hand sanitizer containers being stored outdoors, with more pallets being delivered.”
Wilkins wrote that he also observed “operations indicative of an intent to improperly dispose of the hand sanitizer materials in a pit dug on site.” If disposed of improperly, hand sanitizer containing ethyl alcohol in a concentration of 70%, and maybe contaminated with methanol, is flammable and “creates risks that include fires and potential contamination of ground water.”
TCEQ “orally asked” Latitude to stop accepting any more hand sanitizer materials until it provided documentation showing that the hand sanitizer is not a solid waste “under TCEQ regulations.”
Latitude Liquids “took no such action,” so on Oct. 19, the TCEQ sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company.
A TCEQ investigator said he “observed approximately 1,400 shrink-wrapped pallets of hand sanitizer and approximately 111 totes of hand sanitizer” at the Shamrock site on Oct. 20.
That triggered a TCEQ examination into the company.
Company not registered in Texas or Oklahoma
Records from the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office show that a company named Latitude Liquids LLC was formed on Jan. 14; however, the company “was set up by a registered agent service and no officers or directors are listed.”
On its website, Latitude Liquids claims it is “an organization experienced in the ethanol-based hand sanitizer and recycling markets, which gives us a unique perspective… We have created relationships that allow us to solve your hand sanitizer situation.”
Latitude says it is located in Laredo, Texas, but its “depacking” and recycling facilities are located in Mexico.
Its website includes no telephone number. Inquiries to the company can be accomplished only by filling out a form on the website.
Searches of records of the Texas Secretary of State and of the Texas Comptroller show that Latitude “has not made the proper filings” with either agency “and is not legally authorized to conduct business in Texas.”
The Southwest Ledger checked records of the Oklahoma Secretary of State and found 28 companies with names that include “Latitude.” None is or was named Latitude Liquids, and the most recent of them was established in 2021, a year before Latitude Liquids was created in Wyoming.
Recycling, disposal plan ‘not clear’
4e’s plan for “destruction and recycling” of recalled and unsold products “is not clear,” the TCEQ said.
The motion of 4e Brands Northamerica on May 31 to approve its “destruction process” reported that it “will likely occur in Mexico due to the current market cost to recycle and the location for demand of the recycled products.” The hand sanitizer would be recycled into ethanol and methanol “to be used commercially.”
But 4e Brands’ motion asking the bankruptcy court to approve a settlement with its parent company, 4e Global, “states that destruction will now take place at Latitude’s facilities in Oklahoma and Texas.” Again, those locations are not specified.
The TCEQ asked the court on Oct. 21 to order 4e Brands to stop sending any more hand sanitizer to Latitude Liquids and provide the TCEQ with a written plan for the legal destruction of its inventory of hand sanitizer.
In the TCEQ’s cease-and-desist letter of Oct. 19, Michael McGovern of Latitude Liquids in Rogers, Arkansas, was directed to provide by no later than 5 p.m. Oct. 31 myriad documents and a recycling plan for the hand sanitizer, along with “any records supporting a contention, if any, that you have an economically viable means of recycling” the hand sanitizer.
Further, TCEQ wants to be provided a list of all Texas facilities where 4e’s hand sanitizer is stored, a list of all safety measures in place at those facilities and a list of all Texas facilities where the hand sanitizer has been sent for destruction.