I used to think that failing to recycle plastic was fine, because plastic in landfills is carbon sequestered. If not made into plastic, that same carbon would b

I used to think that failing to recycle plastic was fine, because plastic in landfills is carbon sequestered. If not made into plastic, that same carbon would be burned and enter the atmosphere. Then I found out that, for each carbon bound up in a piece of plastic, a half-dozen are released to the atmosphere in doing that. Thus, for each bit of plastic not recycled, so much more is made from scratch, and that much more CO2 enters the atmosphere. (Presumably, recycling involves energetic processing, but less.) In the future, when the energy used in processing comes more from renewables, will balances shift? Shale oil, by the way, is equally evil. For each carbon extracted and delivered, four or five are burnt in extracting it.