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

Did you guys read the article? It says that the recyclables are “sitting in an open lot, waiting to be recycled” but the processing facility doesn’t have the machinery to do so yet. It will in a few months, when it is scheduled to start recycling plastics.

I’m the first person to bring upthe whole “tons of recyclables just end up on a garbage dump” thing, but this article (or at least the way it’s posted here on lemmy) feels rage-baity.

Im sure enough my recycling likely does not get meaningfully recycled that I would hate to add an airtag to the waste to find out.

Well yeah, no shit. To be recycled, plastic has to basically be pristine, and the very nature of plastic packaging means it usually ends up covered in paint, adhesive, or food. Mostly all three. The first two aren’t impossible to get rid of, but the third is a bitch. Just sorting the clean vs contaminated plastic is tough, but then you also have to worry about the type of plastic. Most varieties are straight up impossible to recycle.

As far as I am aware, FCC is the only company, in Houston that does have plastics recycling capability.

It's a neat facility but it certainly isn't big enough to serve the whole city.

That’s because Cyclix International, one of the partners in the HRC, has yet to open its massive factory to scale up its plastic recycling operation. The company said that it recycles all kinds of plastic and has even already set aside a sprawling space big enough to accommodate nine football fields. However, the current facility is just an empty husk without a single piece of machinery in sight.

I'll hold my ire as they may actually be legit, but it's Texas so we'll have to wait and see.

This isn’t the first instance of the unusual use of AirTags. Many people have already used them to track their luggage when they’re flying (especially internationally), hiding a tag in their bags to make recovery easier in case of theft, or even tagging family members with dementia. However, the one thing Apple likely didn’t think the AirTag would be used for is to track trash.

The first two are exactly what they're for. Nothing unusual about it. Only tracking a dementia patient is potentially unforeseen. Way to pad an article.

Ya no shit. They iirc less than 2% of all plastic made is recycled. They just burn it all. But you should still recycle metals like aluminum and copper.