Yes it is a scam.

youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g

Depends a lot on the material, and your location. Paper recycling, mostly legit. Metal, probably. Plastic, unlikely.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

If you’ve heard no explanation to why this would be the case then it’s probably not something you need to waste any mental energy considering.

It depends on your location and the material, but plastic recycling is kind of a scam. Basically, it requires a lot of labor and energy, the resulting plastic is kind of shit, and as a result plastic is rarely recycled once and basically never recycled twice or more. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_recycling

Not in China.

“It’s a scam” is a non-statement without further elaboration. What is “scam” supposed to mean here? How exactly are people supposedly fooled? What expectations are not fulfilled?

There’s been a few scandals where waste planned for recycling just gets shipped to the third world countries and dumped.

But also, recycling is a scam because its been pushed onto the consumer by industry where industry should be dealing with the full life cycle of their product design choices.

Industry bribeslobbies federal government against regulations that would require them to either make better material choices in design or clean up their mess. Instead they push for policies that require the consumer to foot the bill and local government to attempt to clean up the mess.

Consumers aren’t in a position to bribelobby federal government. Local government isn’t equipped to clean up the mess properly so they ultimately rely on industry who gets to charge the local government to clean up the mess created by industry and then only pretend to clean it up rather than actually clean it up.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. In that order.

Recycling isn’t necessarily a scam, but it’s far more effective to just reduce the amount of waste.

Metal and glass can be recycled almost endlessly. Two of the most renewable materials on earth.
Paper can be recycled a few times before it just needs to go to the landfill to decompose.
Everything else is not actually recyclable. And the environmental cost of collecting, shipping and re-processing those materials into something "possibly" useable is way more taxing on the environment than throwing them away.

We need to put money and time into finding renewal & recyclable alternatives to plastics and other non-recyclable materials, instead of wasting time moving empty plastic bottles all over the planet to be "recycled".

It’s complicated, take it material by material.

The one that’s closest to a scam is plastic. Virgin plastic is made from oil industry by-products, so in most places it’s a lot cheaper than recycled material and tends to be better quality, because it’s hard to properly sort composite resins. It tends to end up overseas somewhere in Asia, despite ongoing efforts by governments on both sides to end the practice. Burning the plastic to generate electricity is in many places labelled as ‘recycling’ but to me it’s not, it’s just efficient incineration. In British Columbia we take it a little more seriously, where RecycleBC is responsible for ensuring recycled material generally stays within the province, tracks the amount that is successfully recovered and generates reports on recycling’s efficacy, but it means people here sort plastic containers, flexible plastics and all separately.

Glass is not really a scam, there are two ways it gets recycled. In places like Mexico, glass bottles are returned, cleaned and reused. Most other times, glass bottles and jars are crushed into silica, which can then be heated into another glass shape again, so the main cost is heat.

Aluminum (pop cans) are one material that is easy to recycle and cheaper and far less environmentally impactful for industry to use than from new refined bauxite, no real difference in quality. Steel cans (think soup cans) are good as well, and generally metal material recovered from larger items at scrapyards is recycled for profit.

Recycled paper is fine, it does save trees if you care about them. Recycled paper tends to become things like cardboard boxes and bathroom tissue, as quality does deterioate each cycle. I’ve been by a paper recyling plant, it stinks a lot of the time but I know they do good work there.

Organics are not recycling, these do successfully become mulch a lot, but anyway the word “compostable” is a bit of a scam and not regulated well. Especially those compostible utensils and bags, they may compost in very specific conditions, but don’t just disappear if you leave it on the ground or in the water.

In any case you’ll want to also consider the cost of transporting, sorting and processing when recycling. That’s why reduce and reuse are better ways to reduce impact compared to recycling. So while there usually is a benefit to recycling, when it’s emphasized particularly by pop bottle companies and oil funded entities, it’s kind of a guise to get you to consume more plastic. I think that’s why people call it a scam.

Yes, and think when growing up the three R’s Reduce Reuse Recycle but which one was pushed the most to use Recycling the only one that doesn’t reduce consumption so companies profits are not hurt.

Yes for the most part it's a scam.

Not completely but when the populous demanded more recycling and care for the environment. Even early on there were some serious attempts but ultimately places found china would take almost anything for recylcing so the various local systems started increasing what was allowed and they would take and the message was increasingly put almost anything in there. China balked and all of a sudden they had to deal with what they had and they had to seriously tighten up on whats allowed and put in fees for not putting the right things in. In my place you still get people putting like mulch into the recycling. I am suspicous of any sytem that does not have recycling seperated early on. Like the suburban systems were most likely recycling most when they did the blue bin and would only take a few things and you could see them being sperated into the seperated bins the special trucks had for glass, plastic, metal, and paper.

I can say I was part of a recycling club in small college and we had seperate paper and bottle bins. The pesident was seperating the bottles into plastic, glass, and aluminimum. I was mostly putting up signage and emptying bins around campus to a central local (the club was small I had a club title because we barely had enough to field it and some where name only). Anyway aluminum made a profit and paper basically could cover itself. Plastic was the most expensive for the amount and glass was less so. We paid for the losing recycling with the money from aluminum and club funds (clubs got some money from the school each semester). This combined with the work we did to keep it going.

I suspect any recycling not be seperated. Paper in particular has to remain clean and dry. Combining it ruins it and its barely can stay even as it is. If ruined by food or water it maybe could be mulched (I think municipal mulching systems likely work. jeez I hope anyway). Most metals likely do get recycled as they have value. You know things that really can be recycled because they have places that will take it and pay you for it. My municipal provider throws everything into a standard garbage type truck and crushes it during pickup like other garbage. As I said my neighbors regularly spoil the recycling containers which then get mixed with the other condo ones so if one did not get spoiled it is now and its further mixed with ones form other condos in the area where if they are recycling saints whatever they have is spoils. They likely have some way of seperating out metal or such in bulk but I bet the large majority now goes to landfills. My hope is some of the chemical process ones can work out and maybe they can even treat the mass to where it would sorta melt out the plastic although I can’t see that working with paper mixed in.

Lots of good comments here already. Let me add my two cents. Plastic recycling could work, it would require two very big changes:

1. We need to produce a LOT less gasoline. Plastic is made from the waste product of making gas. Make less gas, and the supply to make plastics decreases. Right now gas companies basically give the plastic feed stock away for free because they have so much of it. Recycled plastic cannot compete at that price point.

2. We (America, don’t know about other countries) need a MUCH better system to identify and separate our different plastics after consumer use. PETE (recycle code 1) is completely different than PVC (recycle code 3) which is completely different than PS (recycle code 6). But most Americans just see the recycle symbol & toss their plastic thing in the recycling bin. There’s still no good way to separate these different plastics from each other, which you have to do if you want to melt it down & reuse it for new widgets. The little symbols are too small to read or even notice most of the time. We would need to standardize these in a way that would allow auto-sorting at a factory level.

Recycling is the final reasonable option, not the first.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The scam is in the material choices.

Metal and Glass are easy to recycle. It’s also cost and environmentally effective. Particularly with reuse of glass bottles.

Paper can also be recycled. It can also be composted with food waste.

Plastics are the big problem. They can’t easily be recycled, and the resultant plastic is low quality. Any more than 20% remelt is considered unreliable. The only viable options are landfill or incineration.

Recycling plastics is basically a scam. It shifts the blame onto consumers, letting big companies pocket the savings over glass or (waxed) paper containers.

I get 2 totes to get rid of trash for a household of 8 for 30 dollars a month. Compared to the 45 charge for a second trash can, its simply practical. Now what they do with it is unknown to me.