Is there such thing as proper plastic recycling today? My understanding is that all current generation plastic recycling is basically a scam, minor pilot projec

Is there such thing as proper plastic recycling today? My understanding is that all current generation plastic recycling is basically a scam, minor pilot projects because it is so energy inefficient that you can't possibly do it at small scale, leave alone at the scale of world-wide plastic use. Even the Petroleum Institute has admitted that previous generations of "recycling" was a scam, but swears that this time it's real, is my understanding of the situation. In fact, I seem to recall speculation that most of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was "recycled" plastic that had been shipped from the US and Europe to China, then dumped into rivers there and ended up in the Pacific Ocean, because plastic recycling wasn't just a scam, it was actively negative for the environment. Just to be clear, recycling is good (paper mostly works out, aluminum for sure), but plastic recycling in particular is largely a scam designed to assuage people's guilt at how much plastic they use.