A Texas woman wanted to know where recycled plastic actually ends up, so she decided to track her waste with Apple AirTags.
Brandy Deason, an environmental activist, threw 12 appliances in her recycling bin and watched as they were moved throughout Houston.
While three were missing, nine of the trackers ended up 20 miles outside the city at a waste management facility
Deason became suspicious when Houston launched a new program (WAN) that accepted certain types of plastic that are normally not recyclable, such as Styrofoam.
City officials admitted that more than 250 tons of plastic have been collected since the end of 2022, but none has actually been recycled yet.
Brandy Deason, an environmental activist, became skeptical of Houston’s all-plastic recycling program and decided to investigate where her plastic was going. She threw 12 AirTags in her plastic and watched them travel around the city
Houston launched the program in December 2022 in partnership with ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell and Cyclyx International, allowing residents to throw all types of plastic into recycling bins.
Deason took advantage of this novel approach and placed AirTags in plastic wrap, grocery bags, shampoo bottles and other types of plastic normally banned from U.S. recycling facilities.
“We want to know what happened to this stuff,” Deason said Within Climate News‘Is it really going to be recycled?’
She tracked the AirTags’ movements with her smartphone and saw that more than half of them ended up at Wright Waste Management, a company billed as “the next big thing in recycling.” Critics, however, have called the facility “a farce.”
Deason joined CBS News for her research and visited Wright Waste Management, which is listed as a cardboard recycler who applied in 2022 to work as a plastics recycler for Houston’s program.
CBS sent a drone over the site to capture piles of plastic more than 10 feet high.
Mark Wilfalk, Houston’s top waste management official, said the city is aware of the problem but plans to “hold the waste for now” and “wait and see what happens.”
Cyclyx has promised Houston officials it will open a sorting facility to store and process plastics that can be converted into recyclable pellets, but construction has not yet begun at Wright Waste Management.
Deason put the AirTags in plastics that are typically not accepted in most recycling facilities in the U.S. to see how successful Houston’s program would be.
Not only is the plastic piling up, but the Wright factory has also failed three fire safety inspections in the region, according to documents obtained by CBS.
Wilfalk said only that he and his team would follow up on the fire safety inspection.
Ryan Tebbetts, Vice President of Cyclyx, declined to comment to Inside Climate News on the Wright site’s fire department inspection failures or its legal status, referring questions back to Wright Waste Management.
“Wright Waste Management does not represent us and is currently an interim solution until we can get our plant operational,” Tebbetts said.
However, the plastic baking in the hot Texas sun poses a major fire hazard. There are also neighborhoods just outside the site.
Nine of the AirTags ended up 20 miles outside of town at a waste management company called Wright Waste Management. Drone footage shows piles of plastic more than 10 feet high littering the site
“If that were to catch fire,” Deason said, “the emissions that would come out of that could be very toxic to the people who live around here. And a dangerous, large fire could spread throughout the neighborhood.”
Houston rolled out the program in response to the city’s low recycling rates, and residents can now recycle even bubble wrap and bags, which are normally prohibited in these types of initiatives.
If plastics cannot be processed mechanically, they are overheated and chemically processed into new plastic, fuels or other products.
Exxon and the petrochemical industry call this “advanced” or “chemical” recycling and promote it as a solution to runaway plastic waste.
However, environmentalists have long warned that this process causes highly toxic air pollution, contributes to global warming and should not be considered recycling at all.