September 2016, LyondellBasell announced that it would build a $700 million polyethylene plant at the La Porte manufacturing complex on the Houston Ship Channel that would produce 1.1 billion pounds of polyethylene annually. The company started construction on a La Porte plant in May 2017. The company completed an expansion of its Corpus Christi ethylene plant in January 2017. The plant's capacity was increased by 50 percent to produce 2.5 billion pounds annually. That same year, Hurricane Harvey hit the United States and affected the company's Texas Gulf Coast operations. The Houston Ship Channel was temporarily closed, which prevented crude tankers from reaching refineries. The La Porte facility was damaged but came back online in late October. In December 2017, LyondellBasell partnered with Suez, a French water and waste management company, in the first joint venture between a major plastics and chemicals company and a resource management company. LyondellBasell and Odebrecht entered into exclusive talks for LYB to acquire control of Braskem in June 2018, but did not consummate the acquisition. During July 2018, LyondellBasell announced a partnership with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany to advance chemical recycling of plastic materials and assist the global efforts towards the circular economy and plastic waste recycling needs. The focus of the venture is to develop a new catalyst and process technology to decompose post-consumer plastic waste, such as packaging, into monomers for reuse in polymerization processes. In August 2018, LyondellBasell finalized their acquisition of A. Schulman Inc. in a $2.25 billion deal. That same month, it broke ground on the world's largest propylene oxide and tertiary butyl alcohol plant in Channelview, Texas. The plant is estimated to produce 1 billion pounds of propylene oxide and 2.2 billion pounds of tertiary butyl alcohol annually. LyondellBasell will export the majority of its products via the Houston Ship Channel. LyondellBasell also announced in September that it and its joint partner, Covestro, kicked-off a large investment project in Maasvlakte-Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The Circular Steam Project incorporates an innovative technology into the existing production plant, to convert its water-based waste into energy and is an important contribution to the Dutch government's reduction targets. Philanthropy LyondellBasell holds an annual Global Care Day, where company employees volunteer for community service projects in 20 countries. LyondellBasell raised $2.7 million for United Way in 2015. In 2016, LyondellBasell raised $2.65 million across its 23 company sites for Victoria County