Plastic recycling is the biggest scam of them all, they ship tonnes of it all over the world. PET gets “recycled” once. Ship around the world, Get some fleece clothes back which can’t be recycled.
For non plastic:
Most my packaging materials are going in the fireplace. That way a get energy back.
instead of A, clean it with hot water using energy B, getting in my car driving to recycle center using energy C, have it shipped to a recycling plant,other side of the world or whatever. Using energy from oil.
Material for paper can be made co2 neutral. Organic waste , sure just compost it.
Metalls yea here we have something we’re it’s great to recycle.
Glass. Meh just heated sand. But old glass needs to be disposed of somewhere so yea it is a point in recycle it.
What should be done is reuse and not using materials I can’t recover energy at home from. That’s a heck of a lot better.
Glass bottles that gets refilled is a great example. Other good ideas is to repair instead of throwing a way stuff. True for everything from cars to laptops.
From a capitalists view recycling means (to a certain extent) free labour, raw materials and transports.
Reusing and repairs means less sales.
Ok thanks did not know that. But let’s compare this against a better approach.
Energy use for recycling
Vs reuse
Standardized bottle and jar sizes with pant ( not sure about en word, you pay a bit extra and get it back when returned) that instead of being melted down get a cleaned and reused.
Sweden had a good system that’s still works but not as good as it use to ( some types was removed and different sizes in use) but still have it for 33 cl bottles, as an example.