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Recycling Is Worthless — Here’s The Truth About Where Your “Recycling” Goes
100 Percent Fed Up ^ | July 06, 2026 | Staff

Posted on 07/07/2026 6:22:41 AM PDT by Red Badger

Looks like another “conspiracy theory” just came true again!

To quote Yogi Berra it’s like “deja vu all over again” these days with conspiracy after conspiracy being proven 100% true.

The latest is the Myth of Recycling, or as John Stossel put it: “the Green Religion” otherwise known as Gaia Worship.

I’ve been telling people for years that Recycling is a scam.

Recycling is “garbage”, no pun intended….

I have no doubt some people mean well by it, but it simply doesn’t work!

Most of it does not end up actually getting recycled and the time, energy and “carbon dioxide” that we put into Recycling is far greater and does far more harm than if we’d simply throw the stuff in the garbage.

People have laughed at me when I’ve told them that, but now it’s proven 100% accurate.

A big thanks to John Stossel for his excellent video and for Elon Musk who amplified the message on X this morning:

And in case you need a backup, here is the same video on YouTube.

I will also post the full transcript of the video below in case that’s easier for you.

Please enjoy — and then share this to wake some more people up to the scam of the Green Religion:

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Do you recycle? For sure, absolutely. Absolutely everything I possibly can. For decades we’ve been told Recycle America. Don’t just throw it all away. Because recycling will save the planet. You’re saving the Earth!

And that’s what people believe. We have to do it for the kids, for the next generation. This will all be back on the shelf as a cracker or cereal box in about 4-5 weeks. This recycling company is run by Lynn Hoffman. If we’re not using recycled paper and cardboard we’re cutting down more trees.

Recycling paper and cardboard does save trees. Recycling aluminum does save energy. But most of the other stuff is impractical to recycle. That’s right.

This is material that came into the recycling facility from people’s recycling carts, but is going to leave as trash. Huge amounts of what people send to her recycling plant will never be recycled. The worst is plastic which for years has been marked with a recycling symbol. We see stuff like this all the time, recycling arrows on it, “please recycle.” It’s not recyclable. Even worse, plastic bags clog the recycling machines.

We have to climb in for a couple hours every day and cut them out with the box cutter. But people think most of our plastic is recycled. Yeah, I do think so.

Is it not, you gonna tell me it’s not? That’s the trick? The reality is that The amount of plastic actually recycled is around 5%.

Wow. I figured there was something coming, but I’m, I’m, I’m shocked right now. I didn’t know. It’s sad.

[Cans tossed] All my life, I’ve heard about how important it is to recycle. It’s not. Science writer John Tierney debunked recycling claims years ago. His New York Times Magazine story “Recycling is Garbage” set a record for Times hate mail.

And yet What you said is still true? It’s even more true today. In fact, the economics have just gotten worse.

Now my city would save more than $300 million a year if it just stopped recycling. Recycling is an industry that is using increasingly expensive labor to produce materials that are worth less and less. Because it’s not worth recycling here, much is shipped overseas to countries like Malaysia where it’s just piled up.

A vast field of plastic. Two stories high. Some of it from America. See if we can look on the back here. Marysville, Ohio.

Look! Walmart bag. That pollutes even more and what they don’t burn, they sometimes dump in the ocean.

One garbage truck of plastic is dumped in the sea every minute. Barely any of that plastic comes from American shores so [Dolphin noise]

If you care about saving Flipper, you should put your plastic bottle in the garbage. [Truck running over garbage] The garbage? But then it would go to a landfill. And aren’t we running out of space for landfills? I’m sure we are. People believe that because for years the media said We’ve about run out of places to throwaway our throwaways. They think that because years ago there was so much publicity about this barge. A symbol of this country’s growing problems with trash. The barge travelled thousands of miles looking for a place to dump its load.

But it wasn’t because there wasn’t room. States turned this barge away because alarmist media scared people about what it contained. There could be infection waste. Dripping brown ooze of possibly infectious material. We don’t know what kind of tropical vermin is in that garbage. But the EPA later found it was normal garbage. And landfills had plenty of room for that. Today they have more space than we’ll ever need. If you think of the United States as a football field, all the garbage that we will generate in the next 1000 years would fit inside a tiny fraction of the one inch line. Really!? Oh, that’s surprising.

On top of that, today’s landfills are not the polluters they once were. Some sensible regulations make sure they don’t pollute. Eventually landfills are turned into ski hills, parks and golf courses. [Clink] Putting garbage here is much cheaper than recycling, so why do towns keep pushing recycling?

They do it because people demand it. It’s a sacrament of the green religion. I rinse my cans, I take my labels off if there’s plastic on, that’s something that’s paper. I take the plastic piece off of it. That’s fine if they wanna do it voluntarily, but we shouldn’t mandate that.

It’s not my religion. I don’t wanna perform that sacrament. I don’t want to either. It’s time consuming and complicated.

My city orders us, follow all these rules. And that’s one of the reasons recycling fails is because it’s so complicated people never learn the rules and why should they be spending their free time learning these rules? Worse, lots of what we do is pointless.

If you rinse a plastic bottle in hot water, the net result is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than if you threw it in the garbage. Even Greenpeace said, most plastic simply cannot be recycled. So what’s Greenpeace’s solution? Let’s stop producing it. You’re saying, don’t use plastic at all.

Ban plastic. I think that’s where we’re headed. No more plastic? But plastic often creates less emissions than alternatives. Environmental groups rarely mention that, or how they misled us about recycling for years. It’s appalling that after telling people for three decades to recycle, they don’t even apologize for all the time and money that they wasted, instead they have an even worse proposal that will make life even worse and even more expensive.

One time-consuming dream of theirs is a “circular economy” where everything is reused. If you’re running out a laundry detergent, you could take your jug back to the store and fill it up instead of buying another one. That’s really the goal. But people don’t want to, you’re, you’re, you’re asking them to do things


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Health/Medicine; History; Outdoors
KEYWORDS: plastic; recycling; trash

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To: Red Badger

Don’t forget they make you wash your recycling wasting millions of gallons of water that they make us pay for with a water tax


41 posted on 07/07/2026 7:54:33 AM PDT by butlerweave (Fateh)
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To: Red Badger

Only the useful idiots believe recycling programs are actually for recycling.

The real reason is to bring more money into government hands (because they need money to manage the program) which gives the savvy ones more money to skim off the top for themselves.


42 posted on 07/07/2026 7:55:10 AM PDT by fruser1
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To: Red Badger

The Green Religion is nothing but power hungry absolute control freaks


43 posted on 07/07/2026 8:01:56 AM PDT by butlerweave (Fateh)
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To: oldtech

Recycle bins do make it more convenient for the bums that come around ahead of trash pickup and pick out the aluminum cans.


44 posted on 07/07/2026 8:02:24 AM PDT by HartleyMBaldwin
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To: faucetman

Recycling is yet another fraud on the gullible public by “experts” and bureaucrats. If someone wants to sort through my trash they can. I do pay to have it removed from my premises. What they do with it is up to them. Just don’t make me pay for this recycling scam.


45 posted on 07/07/2026 8:02:53 AM PDT by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation Camp?)
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To: Carry_Okie

How about we drop leftover, unwashed plastic into volcanos?


46 posted on 07/07/2026 8:05:25 AM PDT by Bethaneidh
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To: Red Badger

LOL, I like that observation.


47 posted on 07/07/2026 8:06:48 AM PDT by ansel12
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To: Red Badger

I should watch John Stossel regularly but don’t. Anyway, great job!


48 posted on 07/07/2026 8:11:45 AM PDT by ChessExpert (Infidels of the world unite against the evil that is Islam.)
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To: Red Badger

Ours goes to the burner.
Makes energy

Scrubbers on the burner keeps the air clean


49 posted on 07/07/2026 8:16:49 AM PDT by Chickensoup
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To: Red Badger

Reading through all, AL and Cardboard seem to be worth it.

Plastic is not.

How about glass?


50 posted on 07/07/2026 8:18:37 AM PDT by Scrambler Bob ( My pronoun is EXIT. Generally full of /S -- Living with Havana Syndrome -infected from Main Stream)
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To: Carry_Okie

You are correct.

Glass and metal can be recycled indefinitely. (Makes you wonder if that gold or silver coin you have has metal mined in ancient times)

Paper fibers lose their aspect ratio each time they’re recycled and plastic loses its molecular weight each time it goes through the screw extruder to be extruded or molded.


51 posted on 07/07/2026 8:19:16 AM PDT by packagingguy
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To: Red Badger

Decades ago, a member of a well known “Family” up north told me that all the trucks went to the same dump, and his “uncle” was in the garbage business so he would know.


52 posted on 07/07/2026 8:28:30 AM PDT by Highest Authority (DemonRats are pure EVIL)
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To: ShadowAce

I had exactly the same experience. My attempts to recycle ended that day.


53 posted on 07/07/2026 8:37:24 AM PDT by T. Rustin Noone
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To: piasa

How do their eggs taste?..


54 posted on 07/07/2026 8:41:07 AM PDT by astounded (The democrat party is a clear and present danger to the USA)
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To: piasa

How do their eggs taste?..


55 posted on 07/07/2026 8:41:18 AM PDT by astounded (The democrat party is a clear and present danger to the USA)
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To: Highest Authority

If there is no market for the recyclables, then the stuff has to go somewhere!..........


56 posted on 07/07/2026 8:43:39 AM PDT by Red Badger (Iryna Zarutska, May 22, 2002 Kyiv, Ukraine – August 22, 2025 Charlotte, North Carolina Say her name)
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To: NorthMountain

Especially now that the US has no operating lead mines.


57 posted on 07/07/2026 8:48:40 AM PDT by FrozenAssets (You don't have to be crazy to live here, but it helps)
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To: Red Badger

It made a lot of folks a lot of money.

You can generate power by incinerating trash:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69897-w

https://thrivabilitymatters.org/china-waste-to-energy-cleaner-future/?__cf_chl_f_tk=3ssORzUiW7ozBc66P2y819mU_Y_QPD8Tz3Rf2SOX7eQ-1783438894-1.0.1.1-5nQ.BFiwP1k5Ytgd.D72ENht7pAjFmde36HLmW.sBq0

That gets rid of your landfill issue (~90%) and addresses power production.

BUT, does this make the right people rich, and does this create a good photo op?

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/image/image_file/p032112lj-0275.jpg

https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/c2400x1350-w2400-q80/uploads/2022/08/spnphotosten931840-2400x1350.jpg.webp

We would rather build wind turbines and solar farms! LOL


58 posted on 07/07/2026 8:51:26 AM PDT by Red6
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To: Bethaneidh

All it takes is 1,300 degrees F (still haven’t worked out the degree symbol on a Ubuntu computer).


59 posted on 07/07/2026 8:52:35 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (The tree of liberty needs a rope.)
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To: Red Badger
Recycle what is practical, metals and such.

Burn what is not to generate energy.

Bury the rest and let it break down. BTW lots of landfills are harvesting the methane produced by the landfill and turning it into energy.

60 posted on 07/07/2026 9:09:13 AM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (The tree accused of killed Sonny Bono was planted.)
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