Wide-spectrum recycling efforts in the United States has only been in practice for about 20 years. Earlier metal and glass recycling efforts existed prior to th

Wide-spectrum recycling efforts in the United States has only been in practice for about 20 years. Earlier metal and glass recycling efforts existed prior to that but the widespread implementation of plastic recycling programs is only a couple of decades old. 20 years is not a long time to solve such a difficult problem. 20 years after the invention of the transistor the first microprocessor had not been invented-- and determining how to handle millions of tons of plastics is a lot harder than figuring out how to shrink down a transistor. One of the problems with recycling programs is that most of the outputs of electronics and plastic recycling are in foreign countries, countries that cannot cope with the ecological impacts of being the dumping grounds of US and EU recycling shipments. One simple way to decrease the costs and increase the effectiveness of recycling efforts is to require that packaging be made of easily-recyclable materials. Assertions about an activity like recycling based on an economic argument makes as much sense as applying capital-M Market theories to healthcare, nutrition, and environmentalism. In places where capital-M Market theories are applied to those areas, what occurs is that the rich enjoy outstanding healthcare while the poor are discharged from emergency rooms onto the streets in hospital gowns and slippers after being stabilized, people die ten years sooner than those in equally-industrialized nations because they are addicted to high fructose corn syrup, and fracking firms poison West Virginian watersheds because jobs trump the need for clean water. Plastics and e-waste are difficult to recycle, and absent massive investment in research and development will likely be difficult to recycle so long as there is an infinite variety of them and potential consumers are on the other side of the globe. People who argue from economics will continue to do so like cult members convinced of the infallibility of their prophets as a metaphorical line of misery and destruction keeps rising and engulfing the less fortunate, so long as the line does not rise to their level. But it will, and when it does the "job creators" will realize that you can neither eat nor breathe an investment portfolio. One day, humanity's addiction to plastics and the near-perpetual problems they create (the persistent presence of microplastics in sea life and the human bloodstream being just one) will be seen as a mistake as grave as leaded gasoline.