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>What do we do about all this?

Don't recycle for the sake of recycling. Tax any externalities associated with virgin plastic manufacturing and plastic recycling. Let the market figure out what's the most efficient. This weird obsession of recycling-for-the-sake-of-recycling is what led to this problem in the first place.

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This right here. Taxes can have a huge impact on behavior. However, corporation's ability to lobby can delay or stall any efforts to make meaningful changes quickly. I think we'll get there, but it'll take far longer than it needs to.

> Let the market figure out what's the most efficient.

The idea of using the market, which has only ever been good at figuring out how to rape mother earth as thoroughly as possible, to solve environmental issues gives me calling-upon-Hannibal-Lecter-to-solve-your-serial-killer-case vibes.

Markets respond to incentives. If the incentive is towards raping mother earth (eg. if polluting is more productive than not polluting, and pollution isn't punished), then that's the behavior you're going to get.

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