Texas resident used Apple AirTags to discover plastics taken to Houston recycling centers aren't being recycled

Recycling is mostly a scam. Most recycled trash is just dumped on third world countries.

The cost to dispose or recycle should be paid by the companies that produce the product. Products would waste less material and recycling would be profitable for recycling companies doing a public service.

Yes, companies will want to make customers eat that cost. I don't know if there is a legislative solution for that or what.

Update: AG Ken Paxton sues Texas resident for exposing lack of actual recycling at a Houston Center.

I fully support throwing AirTags, and really all Apple products, directly in the trash.

This was already discovered some years back. The estimate of recyclables not being recycled was way beyond high. I can't remember the number so I'm not quoting it.

Demand corporations reconfigure their packaging operations instead of letting them gaslight into thinking we're the problem.

Plastic companies created the 'recycling' efforts to get the public to believe their use of plastics wasn't as bad as it is. In reality, it is horrible for the environment.

I read the article, this is different from the other airtag exposes done on other recycling agencies: the plastic is still sitting on their property with a promise to be recycled later. They may break that promise at some point, but they haven’t yet, so the jury is still out IMO. Unlike other experiments like this where they find the airtags end up in a trash landfill or an incinerator.

We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less).

^{https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541/pdf}

Whaaaaaaat? No waaaaaaay.

AirTag in the trash. Quite fitting...

Venture capital strikes again.

As of 2015, approximately 6300 Mt of plastic waste had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment. If current production and waste management trends continue, roughly 12,000 Mt of plastic waste will be in landfills or in the natural environment by 2050.

Plastic has multiple type that each require a different process for recycling.

Having a bunch of plastic all mixed up together needs people to manually separate them.

It's a joke.

So that’s what those things are worth for

my wife recycles all the plastics we got, because she really wants to try and I just can't break her heart and tell her how shit it all is.

Sort of a non story. Places that have regular collection don't stop collecting if a plant moves or is over capacity. It is stored. Stopping collection till plant opens gets people out of the habit of separating recyclables ar home. The quote about fuel pellets creating fumes, it is in place of oil burning for heat/energy. Oil releases same fumes, and using plastic fuel while not ideal use, reduces oil and coal mining and processingbto get a usable heat source.