I think you’re reading some heavily motivated sources. See my reply above. There are significant environmental gains from recycling aluminum and cardboard, and some gains from glass, paper and some plastics.
And China does do a lot of recycling for US plastics—they weren’t throwing it all away. Some of it was low quality and discarded, but at the very least numbers 1 and 2 (PETE, i.e. water bottles, and HDPE, like milk jugs,) are valuable. (But yes, 3-7 are too expensive to recycle, and get discarded with the garbage—feel free not to recycle them.)
I think you’re reading some heavily motivated sources. See my reply above. There are significant environmental gains from recycling aluminum and cardboard, and some gains from glass, paper and some plastics.
And China does do a lot of recycling for US plastics—they weren’t throwing it all away. Some of it was low quality and discarded, but at the very least numbers 1 and 2 (PETE, i.e. water bottles, and HDPE, like milk jugs,) are valuable. (But yes, 3-7 are too expensive to recycle, and get discarded with the garbage—feel free not to recycle them.)