The recycling debacle was a really good sounding idea that nobody bothered to test on a small scale before deploying nationwide. Nobody bothered measuring the actual cost/benefit on the claim that it wouldn't work unless everybody did it. Then it became a social shaming meme that rallied around "reducing waste" while we likely were causing the opposite with all the extra energy, fuel amd resources spent reducing waste rather than leaving it to future technological advances to mitigate and perhapse even exploit landfills.

Today we have a virtual floating continent of "recycled" plastic in the ocean, most likely as a result of the US's exported waste being dumped directly from containerships into pacific port waterways rather than being reused as it was promised.

Good work Milley Zantow!