New York's biggest argument against recycling is the high cost of labor in one of the world's most expensive cities. Yet, New York has an army of welfare drones. A far better solution than filling up out-of-state landfills (which has its own political repercussions) is to require a given amount of hours at a neighborhood recycling center in return for the welfare check.
While I'll grant that some recycling is ridiculous, bottles, cans and the like make sense all the more in crowded urban areas than anywhere else.
Why should trucks drive around collecting the stuff? A two-wheeled push cart has a lot of capacity and can beoperated by one person. That's the way we do it in Tokyo, Osaka and other major cities in Japan. We don't have a lot of problem with welfare cheats either-- most people find even menial work more dignified than voting themselves handouts.
The cost of recycling is high, even if the cost of the labor involved in sorting and handling is not added to the cost. The cost of dedicated collection of sorted materials and transportation and processing of the collected materials exceeds the value of the collected material plus the avoided disposal costs by an estimated $50 million in NYC next year. Aren't there better ways to spend this money?