What happens to all of the weapons, blades, and liquids the TSA confiscates daily?
You might think everything gets thrown away, but that’s not the case. In fact,
something you have surrendered to the TSA may now be the property of someone else. Where
do all the banned items taken at the airport actually go? You’re not going to believe this.
The first thing to clear up is that the TSA does not actually confiscate any items. The
passenger willingly surrenders them. This is because there are multiple ways for a passenger
to keep their item instead of giving it to the TSA. For example, most things that the TSA won’t
let you carry on the plane can be placed in your checked luggage, within reason of course. You can
actually put a chainsaw in your checked luggage if you wanted to, as long as the gas tank is empty.
Other items can be returned to your car if it's parked at the airport,
or even mailed to your home address. You have to pay the postage, but most airports
have a way to forward your belongings along to you if it is really important.
But what about everything else? Where do the countless
items that are surrendered to the TSA actually go?
It depends on what the item is. Stuff like a bottle of water or
soda is immediately thrown away. This is because there is no way for the TSA to
actually verify what is in the bottles, so they are just disposed of. This includes
unopened bottles of high end liquor, which is a real shame when you think about it.
On the other hand, any gun or illegal substance is immediately handed over to
the local police. And there is a caveat to these items, the person who tried to bring
them on board is also handed over to local law enforcement as well. So it's best to just leave
any weapons or illegal substances at home when you are planning to get on a plane.
Besides liquids and illegal items everything else that the TSA takes has a different fate.
Every day in the approximately 450 airports in the United States the items that the TSA
has collected begin a long journey. Since most airports have multiple terminals and checkpoints,
there are a lot of materials that need to be collected from a lot of different locations.
In fact, there is even a TSA job called the “property custodian,” whose sole responsibility
is to go from checkpoint to checkpoint collecting bins, boxes, and buckets filled with passengers’
items that were surrendered at security. These TSA agents also stop at the airport lost and found
to collect any items that people left behind and did not return to claim.
The property custodians normally wheel around carts and dollies to bring the
boxes of items to their trucks where they are driven to a facility where everything
can be sorted. Every day hundreds of pounds of items are collected,
which means that when it is time to sort them, there is a lot of stuff to go through.
Sometimes the property custodians will do some of the sorting before loading the truck.
Certain beauty products, aerosols, and other substances that are not allowed on the plane
are sorted into two categories: flammable and nonflammable. Obviously the flammable
material needs to be dealt with in special ways, and is normally brought to a fireproof
building on the outskirts of the airport where it awaits pickup by a hazardous waste disposal team.
The rest of the substances are either thrown out or recycled, depending on what they are. After
all of these substances have been appropriately dealt with it is time to go through the good
stuff. At this point the staff who sorts through the surrendered items puts on safety
gear like kevlar gloves. In the remaining bins can be anything from sharp knives to blenders.
These bins tend to have a lot of metal in them as people forget that they are
carrying swiss army knives, scissors, corkscrews,
or any other object with a pointy end or blade that the TSA will not allow on the plane.
Any object that is a hidden weapon like a knife concealed in a stick of lipstick or
brass knuckles attached to a phone case are thrown away. The TSA does not allow hidden weapons to be
released back into the general public. At this point everything has been sorted by TSA workers,
and all that’s left are items that have a functional use. So, where do they go next?
It is important to note that the TSA will hold items at their airport facility for a certain
amount of time. Although we may find the security and confiscation of items a little annoying,
the TSA agents are just doing their jobs. When items are taken, they are stored in
case the owner comes back to claim them. This is especially true of lost and found items. The TSA
does not immediately ship out items to be sold, they instead store them for a reasonable amount of
time until it is deemed probable that the owners will not return for their belongings. The amount
of time that an item stays at the sorting facility is normally around 3 to 4 months.
Also, TSA agents never get to keep the things that people surrender. Even if it is something
as harmless as a multipurpose tool, TSA agents are not allowed to take anything
home with them. Which when you think about it is kind of unfair since they have to deal with such
crazy stuff on a daily basis. But if you’ve ever had to surrender something at airport
security you can be sure your belongings did not end up at the home of a TSA agent.
If an item is not liquid that has been thrown away, a weapon that has been handed over to
the authorities, or hazardous material that needs to be properly disposed of,
it is about to be shipped to a different facility all together.
In order to move the large amounts of objects that the TSA has sorted through and stored an
18 wheeler needs to be brought in. The boxes of items are loaded onto the truck and it drives
them to a State Surplus Distribution Center, or an auction facility run by the government.
This is where most of the items the TSA takes go. Which is really surprising when you think
about it since the TSA collects millions of items across United States airports
every year. This means the government has a huge surplus of surrendered items that they need to
get rid of. Once at a distribution center some of the items from the airports are put to good use.
Anything that can be donated to schools or government offices
is shipped out from the distribution center to those locations. These might
be boxes of scissors and pens for classrooms, or letter openers for local government workers.
Other items that are more dangerous like mace or pepper spray are donated to local
law enforcement so they can be used for training purposes. Anything that can be
used is donated to state programs, which is much appreciated by the people who work there.
However, no government agency needs thousands of knives or forgotten golf clubs, so these items
have a different fate. When boxes and boxes of the same type of items like screwdrivers
or pocket knives are delivered to State distribution sites by the TSA, they may be
put on online auction sites where they can be sold in bulk. These government auctions can be found on
websites like GovDeals.com. Not everything on government auction sites comes from the TSA,
but if there are items being sold in bulk that aren’t normally allowed on planes,
it's a pretty safe bet that those were sent to the facility by the TSA.
More unique items can be sold in stores located at the State Surplus Centers. This isn’t a bad
place to shop because since it is run by the government, and all of the items were either
donated or surrendered, the facility can sell them at 50 to 60 percent below their retail value.
For example, one reporter found a vise-grip pipe wrench that was
being sold for 50 dollars at the State Surplus store was listed for 90 dollars
at one of the big home improvement chains. Buying items that the TSA has confiscated
is much cheaper than going to a regular store, just something to keep in mind.
So, after someone hands over their item to the TSA it is sorted, shipped, and sold by the government.
You may be wondering if this is a cost effective operation that the government has implemented
and the answer would be yes. Since the items that are being sold are basically donated to the TSA,
there is very little initial cost to the government. Of course they need to pay the
TSA agents and property custodians as well as the drivers that deliver the items to the facilities,
but that money comes from your taxes, so anything that is sold is pure profit.
At the beginning of this program the government made around 1.5 million dollars on items that
were taken by the TSA and sold at the State distribution facilities. And now that more
and more items are being sold online, their profits will continue to increase
since TSA agents are still collecting numerous items on a daily basis.
At this point you may be wondering if something you’ve had taken by the TSA has ended up being
bought by someone else. The answer is most likely yes. And if it wasn’t purchased, it may have been
donated. Either way, when you surrender something of value to the TSA it will make the long journey
through sorting to a distribution center where government workers will find it a new home.
Knowing that the items you bought with your own hard earned money may end up being
resold by the government may not be an ideal situation. So, here are some tips and tricks
to help make sure you don’t have to surrender anything while going through airport security.
If you didn’t know already, the TSA has an app called “When I Fly,
Can I Bring . . .?” which works basically exactly as you would expect. The app lists
over 3,500 items that you can search through. When looking for a specific item the app will
tell you if you can bring it on the plane or not. So, before going through airport
security it may be worth checking out any items you have questions about.
Another helpful trick is that anything which is important or expensive should have a tag or label
with your contract information on it. If you lose the item the label will allow the TSA to track you
down and return it to you. Contrary to popular belief the TSA doesn’t really want your stuff,
so if they can easily contact you and return your property, they will do so.
As a last resort, and this is a long shot but worth mentioning,
you could always go to the government auction websites to track down an item. This may seem
silly to re-purchase the item that was taken from you in the first place,
but maybe it has some kind of sentimental value. On the other hand, if you do go exploring the
items at State Surplus centers or government auctions you will probably find some pretty
cool cheap stuff, so you might end up with something you didn't even know you wanted.
Now watch “Doing THIS At An Airport Will Land You
In Prison.” Or check out “The Scary Mystery Behind The Denver Airport.”