Keep up the good work.
Here is the film that allegedly was watched by the Chinese President for him to ban the plastic imports (and ban the film):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRVhRt1p54
Even if you instinctively do your recycling and minimise your waste, this film is a true eye opener.
For instance, imagine you buy a plastic bottle containing some healthy juice type of drink, the plastic label around the plastic bottle as well as the plastic cap will have to be taken apart in China by someone with more dexterous hands than yours. You might have washed the bottle out and done your best to get it into the correct recycling bin but there is so much more to it than that. Someone else is doing the hard work of working out what the different plastics are, grading the things, getting everything washed and getting everything cut into smaller pieces that can then be processed into new goods. As part of this process a lot of small bits of plastic float off to end up in the sea.
Note in the video how cigarette lighters are used to burn a small corner of mystery plastic items to determine the type. This is particularly the case with those black plastic food trays. Imagine if your local council insisted your children do this before putting things in the recycling!
Some comments here have noted that plastics are lighter - you only need 1/20th the weight for a plastic container compared to glass - therefore plastics are 'greener' due to the lowered transportation costs. This we know.
Some have also commented that washing glass containers is a 'waste of energy', however this is a moot point given that plastics that get recycled get washed in China. This is after shipping the junk half way around the world. So I am not sure why this is better, it still costs money even if those shipping containers heading for China are empty and therefore the ride is 'for free'. This is merely 'Hollywood accounting', the journey to China is a lot more than twenty times further than the journey to the local dairy or other bottling plant.
I think it is time we re-evaluate recycled glass containers again. The recycling is reuse and not this human misery story shown in the film.
There are other things that can be done. For instance, the milk in plastic bottles comes with a blue/green/red plastic top that contaminates the white/clear plastic of the main bottle. Underneath the plastic top is a paper laminate piece that is a tamper proof seal. Normally this is a white piece of 'card'. If these small pieces of laminated card were coloured blue/green/red instead of the bottle top with the top being the same clear plastic as the rest of the bottle then we would have a solution to that.
This could work well for the industry but nobody has thought of doing it this way. Instead the industry has lightened the colours of the tops so there is less colour contamination in recycling.
Then, of course, should we be drinking 'liquid meat' in the first place? Or having this 'liquid meat' carried across mountain ranges to and from dairies when only a generation ago we had glass bottles and local dairies.