I suspect you are correct here. We were shoving "recycling" in otherwise empty shipping containers and sending them to China where they get dumped on the ground and the poorest of the poor pick through them for the few things that are actually recyclable.
I saw at least one person say back in the 2000s that single stream recycling was basically a lie, but it was worth it to get people into the recycling mindset. This is the same reason many towns still do "recycling" pickup, but then haul all of that straight to the dump. Personally, if it's just not feasible I'd rather they go back to only taking aluminum, steel, and maybe glass than try to pretend that they're actually reusing any of that plastic or paper.
> I suspect you are correct here. We were shoving "recycling" in otherwise empty shipping containers and sending them to China...
This actually makes sense. The container trade imbalance leaves the U.S. with a large excess of containers (it costs more to return them than for China to make new ones apparently).
I actually just bought a condo on eastern shore of MD. The small town stopped recycling a few years ago to save $800K/yr, and is instead burning the trash in Pennsylvania at a power plant. I wrote the council an email and said I'm willing to pay more to reinstate recycling, and I bet many residents feel the same.
However, I do wonder, even if this hurdle is jumped, if the refuse is actually getting recycled in the end. Ignorance has been my bliss, but maybe it's time for me to stop being ignorant.
Consider advocating for plasma gasification after the low hanging recycling efforts have been picked (metals, glass, and construction material must be presorted from gasification feedstock to prevent excessive slag production). It's cleaner than incineration, and the resulting syngas and slag can be used for energy generation and road construction (respectively). There is a cost of course, but is arguably a net positive versus landfilling or burning recyclables.
In the end, with much effort, America is going to need to adopt the sorting required for multi stream recycling/waste disposal if we want to "clean up our act", until such time a machine is invented where unwanted matter goes in and desired matter (and/or energy) comes out.
Recycling is basically fake outside of aluminum (and other metals, and very specific plastics - but those are effectively impossible to sort properly by consumers [0]).
[0]: Remember all those codes on the bottom of bottles in the 1990s?
I saw at least one person say back in the 2000s that single stream recycling was basically a lie, but it was worth it to get people into the recycling mindset. This is the same reason many towns still do "recycling" pickup, but then haul all of that straight to the dump. Personally, if it's just not feasible I'd rather they go back to only taking aluminum, steel, and maybe glass than try to pretend that they're actually reusing any of that plastic or paper.