I don't do much recycling, but I am still very environmentally friendly. I teach my kids about the importance of being environmentally friendly. I tell them, "It is OK to pee on a tree or grass coz your pee is actually good for the plants. Same thing for dog shits. It's ok if the dogs shit on the lawn coz the shit is also a fertilizer"
That wasn't the best effort by Penn & Teller, I thought. They uncovered the fact that a lot of people feel self righteous in doing recycling which is a cliche, and that it costs money and resources to recycle which is obvious. I wasn't aware that it cost 8 billion dollars, but maybe that reflects the need for a better system than the one that the USA currently has in place. I don't think there is anything good about burying our soil with garbage.. pretty sure that reducing landfill mass is worthwhile, maybe not now but in the future. My old school was built on a landfill and I can tell you it wasn't as beautiful as they suggest. Our fields were fucked. The resources used to dig deeper holes and lay down more thick rubber proofing for more dumping could just as well be spent on reconstituting plastics and putting them to use again.. perhaps more efficient methods are required.
i tried convincing my family but they find it too hard to separate paper and plastic on a day-to-day basis. Something about it frustrates them.