Gosh a lot of misinformation. Going on here especially about the recycling of plastics and what “recycling” means in this country. Are people not aware that for LA in this country “recycling” is a money making venture , saving on landfill tax and getting revenue for “recycling”?
I work in an area associated with the waste industry and see for first hand what happens to the stuff that you supposedly recycle . For that reason I never recycle any plastics other than plastic milk bottles and clear plastic bottles.
This is because firstly it is technologically impossible to recycle some plastics - polystyrene, black plastic, previously recycled plastic . Look at the number in the recycle triangle 1 and 2 (PET) are the easiest and sometimes recycled here in the U.K or the Netherlands . However, the collection of widespread mixed plastics has drastically reduced the quality of what is collected.
What worries me most is the amount of plastic shipped from the U.K. to the Far East previously China who had the sense to recently stop it but continuing in other countries where they are more interested in the money it brings rather than our worlds and their own environment. Don’t put your heads in the sand people there is a correlation between us in the rivers in the world and ultimately the oceans which are heavily polluted and where our “recycled” waste goes. We are assisting this.
I believe the most sustainable way to dispose of most plastics ( all but 1 and 2 types) is to incinerate it in modern energy from waste plants that also use the heat as well as creating electricity. I am lucky enough to live in an area where the waste creates electricity but the heat is not collected , I would prefer it if it was both but still choose to only recycle certain plastics because of this.
I would rather we didn’t landfill waste that could be actually recycled but firmly believe that as bad as landfilling is, at least in this country we have high environmental standards than countries supposedly recycling ours where the environmental damage is huge.
And to finish , yes I recycle paper, card, glass, metals which are widely recycled ( glass by the way is usually crushed to make a low grade aggregate not to make new bottles - too much contamination)