Are you sure? A garbage truck direct to the landfill is less energy than a garbage truck (for what isn't recycled), and a second truck to the sort facility, all the machines to sort, and then a truck to the landfill. Now if only Al goes on the recycling truck this is a clear win since recycled Al much less energy than mining new. However for many plastics the value is already questionable if it is recycled, and clearly worse if not. (I'm not sure about paper or glass)
Yes, if everything else were held equal, but it's not. People have a limited amount of energy to dedicate to caring about environmental issues; every minute spent talking about recycling (or other only marginally important environmental issues) is one we're not spending talking about things that matter.
And by FAR the most effective way to do that for the average person is to drive less.
Most people have no idea how far they need to drive to produce 1kg of CO2 (even though it's widely advertised alongside fuel efficiency).
Personal choices matter.
I'm not going to sweat recycling while our entire political economy makes a farce of caring about the future.
Insanely naive take. They react to capital.
No, it's a scheme to stave off taxes on plastic packaging, or regulations to mandate glass. Which industry cares about how people feel about themselves, to fund and promote this scheme? On the other hand, it's very easy to point to the industry that benefits from continued use of plastic.
Not really, no. The carbon footprint associated with your consumption has little-to-nothing to do with the type of economic structure that provides it.
Lots of fossil fuels are produced by the state, some even in socialist countries. Burning oil extracted by Pemex or Petróleos de Venezuela releases just as much carbon as oil extracted by Chevron.
And high-quality grass-fed organic beef raised by your local rancher involves at least as much carbon emissions as the cheapest beef you can get from Wal-Mart. Why wouldn't it?
The issue is consumption of fossil fuels, not capitalism. Capitalism is indirectly at fault only inasmuch as it has grown the economy, enabling our consumption of fossil fuels to increase.