Recycling should be a last resort; "reduce -> reuse -> recycle" is a hierarchy. Plastics aren't really worth recycling due to poor yields. While climate change

Recycling should be a last resort; "reduce -> reuse -> recycle" is a hierarchy. Plastics aren't really worth recycling due to poor yields. While climate change is definitely a problem, there are more problems associated with rampant consumption; I'm actually more concerned by plastic pollution. Most plastics break down into tiny particles that get eaten by small and micro-organisms, which inevitably contaminates our food chain. The workaround is to rely even more on industrial farming, making sure to isolate arable farmlands from any organic contamination. Industrial farming, of course, introduces massive nitrogen run-off, which gets into the oceans, which disrupts those ecosystems and food-chains... Both climate change and plastic pollution could have been avoided by reducing consumption, but there are too many perceived benefits to the individual and society for people to just stop. And no-one wants to be called a Luddite. On the plus side, we're in historically one of the longest periods of peace (it might not seem like it, but that's partly because we just got better at distributing information).