52.50% - Accepting glass, wet cardboard, and mixed plastics together guarantees contamination that renders the whole batch landfill-bound — these programs are structured to fail.
22.50% - Incineration with energy recovery beats landfill on greenhouse gases, land use, and methane — landfill methane is 25x more potent than CO2, and waste-to-energy is the answer we keep ignoring.
15.00% - We built curbside recycling because it made people feel good — when China stopped buying contaminated recyclables in 2018, most went straight to landfill. The virtue signal was real; the environmental impact was not.
10.00% - Most cities lose money on recycling programs — materials are contaminated, trucks burn diesel, sorting costs millions; the economics have never worked.
Subsidizing source reduction is more effective than subsidizing recycling programs.
100.00% - Accepting glass, wet cardboard, and mixed plastics together guarantees contamination that renders the whole batch landfill-bound — these programs are structured to fail.
50.00% - Subsidizing source reduction is more effective than subsidizing recycling programs.
50.00% - Producing less waste at the source is the priority; recycling is downstream cleanup.
0.00% - Subsidizing waste reduction is more effective than subsidizing recycling programs.
50.00% - Plastic pollution
