Tuesday, 22 April 2025

Climate Coach: Where does hurricane waste go? We tracked it with Air Tags to find out.

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Trash was collected at the Treasure Island Community Center Park before being hauled off the island.

(Chris Zuppa/For The Post)

Where does hurricane waste go? We tracked it with Air Tags to find out.

Days after the one-two punch of Hurricanes Helene and Milton struck Florida's Gulf Coast last fall, piles of waste and debris walled the streets of this community.

The small 1.54-square-mile island would produce over 128,000 cubic yards of debris after the storms — roughly 2 million standard kitchen trash bags worth of waste. That's about 300 bags per each of the island's 6,500 residents.

Treasure Island is one of 24 municipalities that make up Pinellas County, and each would work with a variety of private haulers to clean up the millions of cubic yards of waste left after the two hurricanes.

A pile of contaminated furniture and appliances towers over the first floor of an apartment building.

(Whitney Leaming/The Post)

Even for one of Florida's smaller communities, the process to remove two hurricanes' worth of debris required two professional hauling companies working around-the-clock for nearly 50 days to haul 7,000 truck loads of trash. Compared to the 36 million cubic yards of waste processed across the state of Florida, Treasure Island is a microcosm of the various local governments and private contractors involved in cleaning the state.

The Washington Post wanted to better understand this complicated process and track individual items of debris. To do that, reporters sought permission from businesses and residents who had thrown out their belongings before sticking Apple Air Tags on 10 items. Starting in October, The Post monitored those items as they moved across southwest Florida.