From the article:

> Using meat tax revenues to subsidise healthy foods is one idea touted to reduce opposition.

As if money actually spent on environmental purposes does anything useful for the environment. Recycling programs, as it "turns out" (as if there were people not already aware of this) put most recycled stuff in landfills in China.

So don't worry. Whether the money goes to "something useful" or not. It won't actually be useful.

Don't spread conspiracies without proof.

Here is, for example, a nice chart showing recycling quotas of >80% for most types of waste: https://www.alba.info/fileadmin/alba/pressemappe/kreislaufwi...

Yeah, that's not the US, which you were probably talking about. But it's proof that it's possible.

Since "recycled" clearly means "shipped to a landfill in China" rather than "re-used", those recycling quotas only mean that we waste extra oil shipping the waste around, and none of it is actually recycled ...

Not any more. China isn't buying any more plastic. Well, it is still buying it but has set standards that are nearly imposiible to meet.

Well, no. If recycling programs were actually involving the government checking if the stuff in there was actually recyclable then there would be no problem whatsever meeting those standards.

That is, apparently, not part of those recycling programs.

Turns out the only recycling that was ever done was making great stickers (from oil, of course, you can't make this up). And of course, the government hiring external companies (no doubt owned by "the right people"), who weren't expected to do anything. Nobody wants to check, nobody does check, and I keep hearing it isn't even kept separate.

All government revenue is fungible, so this doesn't matter in the slightest.