Recycled materials are packed into large bales before being sold to manufacturers for reuse.

True story: I used to be a recycler.

I spent most of 2021 driving around the United States living in my car. I stopped in Jackson, WY for the summer and picked up several part-time jobs.

One of those jobs was on the sorting line of the municipal recycling center. On cardboard and plastic days I used a rake to fish contaminants out of the recycling stream. And on aluminum days I stood alongside the conveyer belt and removed contaminants by hand.

It wasn’t a glamorous job but it paid well enough. And it taught me something about recycling that I didn’t know.

Most of the stuff you put in your curbside blue bin isn’t actually recyclable. Especially plastics.

If you’re a proponent of recycling this article is about to crush your soul. It will argue that recycling is a myth. In reality, the key to recycling is to actually recycle less — not more.

Recycling plastic is a myth.

There are only a few materials that can be recycled. Cardboard and aluminum are two of the big ones.

There’s a market for these products. Aluminum can be melted down and infinitely repurposed while cardboard and paper products can be turned into pulp and remanufactured.

Most plastics, however, can’t be recycled.

It’s not economical to do so. You can thank the plastic and oil industries for that.

Back in the late 1970s, an interesting shift started happening with consumer packaged goods. Manufacturers like Coca-Cola switched from bottling in glass to bottling in plastic. Soon every consumer good was packaged in plastic.

Today it’s almost impossible to find a product that isn’t made from plastic. Even your clothes.

This isn’t an accident. Plastic is durable, yes, but it’s a big money maker too.

As plastic was finding its way into consumer goods environmentalists were having their…