What happens to your plastic items put in recycling? These Forsyth elementary students might have an answer - Forsyth County News Online

What happens to your plastic items put in recycling? These Forsyth elementary students might have an answer - Forsyth News

Sophia and Ava Dhaliwal both quickly found a passion for protecting the Earth.

All it took to form that passion was for their teachers at Shiloh Point Elementary showing them videos in class about the impact plastics in the ocean can have on the environment and wildlife.

Their mom, Savina, said after the lesson, the girls came home from school and asked their parents to make some serious changes at home, including cleaning and recycling as much as possible.

But the two sisters know there is more work to do outside of their home to help the environment. To find out more, they started to do some research.

That is when they found out that the Chinese government, which for years bought plastic trash from the U.S. to be recycled and made into new products, cut back on imports of trash in 2018. Knowing this, they were curious to find out what happens to the plastic that they recycle at home now if it isn’t going to China.

“Recycling is truly important to the Earth because it decreases the amount of waste in landfills, but does our plastic really get recycled?” Sophia said. “Well, we decided to find out.”

To test exactly where their plastic recycling was going, the sisters and their mom came up with the idea to put an Apple AirTag into a regular plastic bottle and put the bottle into their recycling bin at home.

AirTags are tracking devices usually used by consumers to find lost wallets and luggage, but Savina said it also turned out to be the perfect way to track their plastic.

After a Red Oak Sanitation truck took the recycling from their home in Cumming on Dec. 11, Ava and Sophia were able to track the AirTag to five different locations throughout the state.

The bottle’s first stop was a transfer station in Alpharetta where it ended up the day after it was picked up from their house. Then, the AirTag showed it had been transported to Cobb County Recycling in Marietta, which they later learned is a sorting facility owned by West Rock.

“For many days following, the AirTag did not update or move, and we thought it must have been damaged or destroyed,” Ava said.

But 17 days later, on Dec. 30, the AirTag notified them it was on the move again. It was moved to another West Rock facility in Lithonia before moving to Pratt Industries Recycling in Conyers on Jan. 9.

The next day, the AirTag showed it was at Pine Ridge Landfill in Jackson.

“Both of them almost were in tears when it showed up in the landfill because I think it was a little bit of a shock,” Savina said. “It was going from one facility to another and they were like, ‘This is it!’ And then I think the landfill was just a shock.”

Both of them, however, said they are keeping in mind that their experiment could have been flawed.

“One of the factors that maybe affected the results was the metal in the AirTag that [could have been] detected in the sorting process,” Ava said.

They found in their research that sorting facilities sometimes use magnets to remove metal from any of the plastic or other recycling they collect, so the metal in the AirTag could have been picked up and either the AirTag or bottle could have been thrown out.

But knowing this, the sisters still question why it would not have immediately gone to a landfill if the metal was detected at the sorting facility in Marietta, its second stop of a nearly month-long journey.

“If this is true, then we do not understand why it was still transferred to multiple other recycling stations,” Sophia said.

Either way, Sophia and Ava realized more needs to be done to ensure plastic does not keep ending up in landfills. Not only are they still advocating for others to recycle plastics at home, but they plan to ask state legislators to consider putting in place a beverage container deposit law.

These laws, or bottle bills, put a deposit on beverages that consumers must pay to the retailer and the retailer must pay to the distributor. In turn, when consumers bring their empty beverage containers back to the supermarket or shop where they bought it, they and the retailer are both refunded for that deposit.

According to the National Conference of State Legislators, bottle bills are “designed to reduce litter and capture bottles, cans and other containers for recycling.”

Ten states in the U.S. and Guam currently have a deposit-refund system for beverage containers.

“It would give an incentive to people to recycle if they are going to get part of their money back,” Savina said. “If Georgia were to have a bottle bill, maybe more people would be likely to recycle and it would put the responsibility back on …. the beverage companies [to ensure items are really recycled].”

And while they advocate for a bottle bill, Sophia has worked to share their findings with others in the community.

Sophia turned their tracking experiment into a school science fair project in which the third grader shared information about each of the facilities where the plastic bottle was sent. The project earned her a spot in a state competition earlier this month where she told judges about their next steps.

In April, Ava and Sophia plan to visit some of the recycling centers their bottle visited for a tour and interview with local managers to find out if their bottle’s journey was a typical one or if the AirTag was likely sorted and thrown out.

Most importantly, the sisters want to learn how the community can best work to keep plastic out of Georgia’s landfills.

By working to find out more and spread the word, Ava and Sophia hope that more people do everything they can at home to ensure the plastic they put in the recycling bin has the best chance of being recycled.