No one wants to hear this but post-consumer plastics recycling is a sham, a Big Tobacco-like fairy tale hatched to protect the plastics industry. It doesn't work, will never work. And it's bad if it ends up in the landfill but worse if it's disposed of some other way. the whole thing is a mess.
in the 90s i worked with a sketchy guy who had done a ton of shitty jobs including sorter at a recycling plant and told me all about this, and also how recycling centers didn't actually recycle plastic they were just drop shippers who sent it overseas
Recycling "does not solve the solid waste problem," the head of a plastics trade group said in 1989, around the time the industry was launching its recycling campaign.
the first one is always the hardest. . .