the first city-wide recycling projects in the USA were faced with this kind of brick-wall reasoning in the 1970s, and yet have built successfully over and over.. the sideways reference to "eco-tax" shows there is an ideological driver here
> the sideways reference to "eco-tax" shows there is an ideological driver here
Yes clearly, thinking a few cents of eco tax will outweigh your ecological impact is like thinking using paper straws makes up for taking the plane once a week. It's nice "feel good" idea but it doesn't have any real world impact. Just look at every pollution related threads on HN, there are always a lot of people blaming China and Asia for having the most polluting rivers, while the majority of the shit ending in their rivers was consumed in the EU/US. Recycling really isn't much more than "I'll put it far away and from now on act like it doesn't exist anymore".
Everything I read about recycling in the US, or anywhere else for that matter, is that it doesn't work very well and most of it is exported, so I'm not quite sure about which recycling projects you're talking about.
plastics is not solved, so we agree on that.. paper and aluminum can easily pay for itself when done well.. lots of dense consumer products are somewhere in the middle.. product design and materials make the difference in many cases
" so I'm not quite sure about which recycling projects you're talking about" .. there are ample business case studies of materials recycling that work, in certain markets, but they do not tend to be at the top of the web-based news
It is unduly onerous to claim "recycling doesn't work" IMO
