"Donation Bin" at CID Checkpoint
 

At CID airport (Cedar Rapids, Iowa).....at the TSA checkpoint just before the ID checker there's a table with 3 bins-- 1 with free baggies, 1 with free booties, and one with a sign for "Please donate your too-large bottles of lotions, shampoos, etc. We will donate them to local shelters."

Looks like a project coordinated by the Airport management...what a wonderful idea that brings together stakeholders and TSA.

Kudos to the Eastern Iowa Airport management (formerly the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City-Waterloo-Amana Colony-maybe Marion, too Collins Rockwell Memorial Regional Area Community Neighborhood Airport).

:td:

People should not have to divest themselves of these items. It's just disgusting theft, with a sprinkle of sugar to make it look ok and make people forget that they are going to be robbed by government actors. :mad:

I wonder who's claiming the tax write-off for the value of all the "donated" items... Sometimes the skeptic in me just can't help but surface itself.

So, they're taking these things away because they're believed to present a potential threat, and then they're going to be donated to a homeless shelter? What next, a bin for collection of toys that have been recalled so they can be donated to a shelter for battered women and their families?

Either the products are potentially dangerous, in which case they should be disposed of as a hazmat, or they're not, in which case they should be allowed onto the plane.

We have had a couple of screeners tell us in the past that TSA has determined they cannot donate confiscated items due to liability issues.

But it sounds like this is being run by the airport, not the TSA. Different issue in play.

However, they are still items that are surrendered due to TSA regs, so TSA could face liability if there were ever an issue.

I've said over and over that I would love to hear that phone call.

"Police? Police? Please, come quick. There's a person here with a bottle of water."

But the passenger doesn't have to donate anything into those particular bins --- which are placed outside of the checkpoint. The passenger still has all of their other "options": put it into checked baggage, give it to someone leaving the airport, remove it from the airport (e.g. put in their car in the parking lot), or put it in the garbage.

I don't see how TSA can incur liability for something that occurs outside a TSA checkpoint.

If you give something to TSA they must destroy it (not that it always happens but that it another topic). If you donate to your local whatever (with the airport management okay) they can do with it as they please.

Part of me says good on them as it does keep usable but typically partially used items out of the land fill and out of TSA hands. Of course there is whole issue of just what is dangerous.

Since the only reason that you must surrender such liquids is that they're suspected as being toxic, explosive, etc.... Why would the homeless and destitute want them?

Is the airport participating in ethnic cleansing?

You see - it's not hazardous until you pass into the realm of the security theater. Prior to that you can donate it or use it yourself. But once you cross that security theater line, the item automatically becomes hazardous (kind of like alchemy).

If people in the government making up these stupid rules were to be rated on common sense, they'd wouldn't even register on the scale.

If it's to dangerous to fly with how can it be donated to local shelters ?

TSA's treatment of these confiscated items demonstrate with clarity that TSA does not consider these items to be dangerous in any manner. Otherwise would not just tossing these things in trash bins at the checkpoint subject the TSA employees to undue risk and hazard to their safety?

Someone needs to call the EPA hazmat response unit a few times to various TSA checkpoints since TSA has declared these items are truly dangerous.

The LGA confiscation program is just a bunch of poor showmanship!

Skeptic nothing. I know they're taking a tax writeoff.

And, of course this is absurd. Either the items are dangerous or they're safe. If they're dangerous, they certainly can't be donated. If they're safe, why aren't they allowed on planes?