Did "Big Oil" Sell Us on a Recycling Scam?

Plastic vs. other recyclables

• Broad consensus that most plastic recycling is ineffective or uneconomic, sometimes called a “scam.”
• Metals (especially aluminum, also steel, copper, lead) are widely praised as highly recyclable and energy-saving.
• Glass earns mixed reviews: technically very recyclable and used effectively in some processes (e.g., fiberglass), but often landfilled in some areas; debate over whether energy savings justify transport.
• Paper and cardboard are considered worthwhile mainly in simpler forms (newsprint, corrugated); many modern paper products are too contaminated to recycle well.

Economics, externalities, and scale

• Virgin plastic is usually cheaper than collecting, sorting, cleaning, and reprocessing used plastic.
• Several comments note that this is partly because environmental and long‑term disposal costs are not priced into virgin plastic.
• Small-scale projects (e.g., local shredders/presses) are seen as admirable but insignificant versus tens of millions of tons of waste; “industrial problems need industrial or legislative solutions.”
• Proposals include taxes on virgin plastic and “extended producer responsibility” (EPR), which some jurisdictions have implemented more successfully than the US.

Landfills, incineration, and leakage

• One camp argues landfill space is effectively abundant and landfilling plastic is acceptable, even preferable to pseudo-recycling and plastic-in-roads microplastics.
• Others counter that most landfills eventually leak, require long-term maintenance, and generate methane and toxic leachate; landfilling is described as a “high-interest loan” of environmental cost.
• Waste incineration is discussed as technically feasible but expensive, politically unpopular, and producing toxic ash that still needs specialized landfilling.

Contamination, behavior, and “theater”

• Many describe mis-sorted bins, “wishcycling,” and office/building setups where carefully separated waste is later recombined, turning recycling into feel-good theater.
• Contamination is said to clog machinery and turn streams into low- or negative-value bales, historically exported to Asia.
• Some local systems (e.g., deposit-return programs with high plastic “recovery” rates) are cited as counterexamples, though commenters question whether “recovered” truly displaces new plastic production.

Responsibility and “the scam”

• Multiple commenters frame the core scam as shifting responsibility from producers to individuals, analogous to jaywalking and identity theft narratives.
• Recycling is seen as over-emphasized relative to “refuse, reduce, reuse, repair,” partly because reduction threatens corporate profits.
• Disagreement remains over wording: some say “recycling is a scam,” others insist the scam is pretending to recycle while continuing high plastic throughput.