Climate activist exposes apparent recycling deceit in Houston after dropping AirTags in plastics

A climate activist in the Houston area learned through a clever use of Apple AirTags that the recycling program in her city was not living up to its promises.

Brandy Deason was skeptical when she heard that "all plastic" — even plastic not usually considered recyclable — would be "accepted" in the recycling program sponsored by the city of Houston.

'We need a huge supply of plastics to get ready for startup here, and we want to start that now in order to get ahead of it.'

An avid recycler and a climate justice coordinator at Air Alliance Houston, Deason suspected that her plastic recyclables weren't making their way to a recycling facility and devised a strategy to test her suspicions. She dropped an Apple AirTag into a dozen different loads of plastic recyclables, leading CBS News reporter Ben Tracy to refer to her in jest as a "plastics spy."

Lo and behold, nine of the 12 AirTags, fully 75%, wound up at Wright Waste Management, a waste-processing facility located about 20 miles from downtown Houston, according to Newsweek.

Back in 2022, Houston officials touted a new, state-of-the-art program from Cyclyx International that would transform almost all plastics into pellets that could then be recycled. According to a LinkedIn profile believed to be associated with it, Cyclyx is a "consortium of companies with a mission to help increase the plastic recycling rate from 10% to 90%."

In under two years, Cyclyx and other companies involved in the Houston program have collected approximately 250 tons of plastics sorted for recycling. Unfortunately, almost none of those plastics have yet been recycled — and most Houstonians are likely none the wiser.

"I think that they've gotten the idea that it's being taken care of and being recycled," Deason told CBS News about her fellow Houston residents.

In fact, much of the supposedly recyclable plastics have been stacked in piles nearly 10 feet high at Wright, aerial drone footage from CBS News showed, waiting for a sorting facility that has yet to be completed.

Ryan Tebbets, a vice president at Cyclyx International, admitted to CBS News that the revolutionary plastics recycling program has never been tried at scale but insisted that most of the material at the waste facility would eventually be recycled.

"We need a huge supply of plastics to get ready for startup here, and we want to start that now in order to get ahead of it," Tebbets explained.

ExxonMobil, which helps fund Cyclyx, likewise insisted that "advanced recycling" is not a pipe dream but a present-day reality. "Advanced recycling is real. It's happening. We're doing it," said Ray Mastroleo, Exxon's global market development manager for advanced recycling.

Mark Wilfalk, the director of solid waste management in Houston, was less enthusiastic about the current state of the plastics recycling program. After viewing the drone footage of the Wright facility, Wilfalk acknowledged that "it's not the most desirable-looking site."

Still, Wilfalk believes that Wright is the right spot for the plastics — for now. "We're gonna stockpile it for now. We're gonna see what happens," he told Newsweek.

"This is not an issue of 'it's our fault,'" Deason told Newsweek. "This is an issue of overproduction of things that are known not to be recyclable in the plastics industry."

Meanwhile, California Attorney General Rob Bonta has been investigating ExxonMobil and Cyclyx's claims about recycling plastics and has openly suggested that some of the promises are largely illusionary, AppleInsider indicated.

Mastroleo of Exxon seemingly disagrees, telling CBS News that "this is just the starting point, and we are in it for the long haul."

Blaze News reached out to Deason for comment but did not receive a response. Newsweek reached out to Wright Waste Management and Houston's Resilience and Sustainability Office for comment as well.

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