Originally Posted by Maelochs

A lot of "recycled" material unfortunately also goes to India and other exceedingly poor places, where starving kids pick through the piles for the one -in-one hundred usable piece and the rest is landfilled.

U.S. municipalia have realized that the law says they have to collect a certain percentage of the waste stream as recyclables and send them to be processed ... but it doesn't say and cannot control whether the recipient simply landfills the lot ... and including shipping that can sometimes be done more cheaply in India or Sri Lanka or Bangladesh than it can in in New Jersey or Ohio.

Nowadays people throw almost everything plastic, paper, or cardboard into the recycling bins ... but only a fraction of it gets recycled. Sorry.