America's Broken Recycling System: The Uncomfortable Truth and the Path Forward
Municipal recycling programs across the United States are operating under a fiction: that collecting materials in blue bins is functionally equivalent to recycling them. In reality, America's fragmented, underfunded, and poorly regulated waste infrastructure sends a staggering proportion of collected recyclables straight to landfill. This is not a problem that individual effort alone can solve — it demands policy reform, corporate accountability, and a fundamental rethinking of how this country