Recycling is to make baby-boomers who were brainwashed in public schools in the 1960’s & 1970’s feel better about themselves.
I’ve got primarily baby-boomers in my neighborhood and they DEMAND to pay $40/month to separate their trash into recycle bins. The trash guys are known to dump both regular trash and recycled trash into the same truck.
Of course, these are the same boomers that live in large houses and drive large SUVs.
Baby boomers know better than to have suckered for the recycling game. It is their offspring who fell for it, just as they do climate change. Boomers were told by their parents all about the government’s drive to have families donate their pot metal for the war effort. That particular material has no military use, so it was bull-dozed into trenches. It did make the suckers feel that they had contributed something.