Throwing Apple’s GPS AirTag in the trash might seem like a big mistake, but it could be the key to undoing the misguided climate action promises made by city leaders and corporations.
Earlier this year, Brandi Deason, a Texas resident and climate justice coordinator for Air Alliance Houston, began putting the tiny devices in recycling bags she was donating to the city’s new “take any plastic” program. The AirTags dinged up in a nearby storage facility, far from where they were supposed to be, and they were not heated, chemically treated, or mechanically chopped up as the program claimed.
Further joint investigations by CBS and Inside Climate News included a visit to waste management company Wright Waste Management, where hundreds of thousands of pounds of unrecycled plastic waste were found. The piles of trash weren’t just sitting there; tons of recyclables are awaiting an ExxonMobil-backed overhaul of the city’s recycling program.
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In response to low recycling rates for single-use and hard-to-recycle plastics, Houston announced the Houston Recycling Collaborative in 2022, proposing a “revolutionary” new way to reuse materials. Exxon and other major oil companies have proposed such “advanced” or “chemical” recycling as a solution to their accumulating plastic runoff, which could turn the plastics into fuel.
Local environmentalists were immediately alarmed by the universal promise of such a recycling effort, as well as the potential environmental damage caused by what is essentially mass incineration of plastic materials. Local environmental watchdogs have been tracking plastics through the system ever since. CBS reports that the city’s storage sites and plastic sorting plants have fallen behind, failed safety inspections or are not fully operational. Right Waste Management declined CBS’s request for comment.
Despite concerns about privacy and safety, and potential appeal to police, users have embraced Apple’s accessible live tracking technology, and this is certainly not the first time AirTags have been used for environmental surveillance.
In 2023, multiple organizations and news outlets, including local affiliates of Reuters, ABC, and CBS, used AirTags to fact-check recycling claims from city programs and major industry players, including petrochemical giant Dow Co. Inside Climate News first published an exposé on the failure of Right Waste Management and Houston recycling in 2023, noting the use of electronic tracking devices by local group The Last Beach Cleanup.
topic
Apple Sustainability