Woman Drops AirTag in Recycling to See If Plastics Are Actually Recycled

A Texas environmentalist curious about the fate of her city’s recycling had her suspicions confirmed after she dropped AirTags in with her plastics to see what happened to them after they were picked up.

Brandy Deason, a climate-justice coordinator for Air Alliance Houston—a nonprofit aimed at reducing the public health impacts from air pollution—said she was wary of Houston’s new “chemical recycling” program, which lists certain types of hard-to-recycle plastic, like styrofoam, as acceptable.

Deason’s AirTag-enabled investigation found that nearly every bag that she put a tracker in ended up pinging her from a waste-handling business 20 miles northwest of downtown Houston called Wright Waste Management.

The company, which is billed as a cardboard recycler, sought to operate as a plastic and “solid waste” recycler last year, part of a recycling initiative launched in 2022 that sought to become a national model for advanced plastic recycling. But Wright’s application for plastic recycling remains under review nearly two years later, and the plastic is piling up.

As part of a joint investigation between CBS News and Inside Climate News, Deason traveled to the Wright facility to see first hand the progress of the two-year-old initiative. Of a total of 12 AirTags placed in separate recycling bags, nine ended up at Wright.

CBS drone video showed piles of unprocessed plastic waste stacked over 10 feet high at the waste management facility. When shown the video and told that Wright’s application to process plastic remained unapproved by state environmental regulators, Houston’s top solid waste official, Mark Wilfalk, said he was surprised but that the plastic was still better off at the Wright facility than a landfill.

Newsweek reached out to Air Alliance Houston, Wright Waste Management and Houston’s Resilience and Sustainability Office via email for comment on Monday morning.

Wilfalk also acknowledged that Houston has collected 250 tons of plastic since the end of 2022, none of which has yet been recycled.

“We’re gonna stockpile it for now. We’re gonna see what happens,” he said.

The Wright facility also failed three county fire safety inspections, according to documents obtained by CBS and Inside Climate News. Wilfalk told the team he would follow up with the fire safety inspection issues.

The report highlights the difficulties of plastic recycling, which is typically more expensive than simply producing new plastic and comes with its own environmental issues, from the creation of microplastics to fire hazards. The Houston program, which includes ExxonMobil as a partner, is part of a plan to use new technology that chemically processes plastic waste into new plastics and fuels.

Environmental activists like Deason say the process —even when it works as intended— shouldn’t qualify as recycling.