The Liquids That Don’t Get Through Security

Where they go:

For starters, liquids surrendered at airports are assumed to be potentially hazardous, and therefore they must be disposed of, so the charity route won’t wash. At LAX, liquids are sorted by type (shampoo, sunscreen, contact lens solution, hooch, etc.) and transferred to large, blue hazmat barrels with metal seals, in a back room of a TSA facility in a nondescript parking garage near the airport. At smaller airports with smaller volumes, like John Wayne Airport in neighboring Orange County, these liquids might just be tossed in the trash and collected like other refuse.