and
https://www.wrap.org.uk/content/environmental-benefits-recyc...
A summary from the latter talking specifically about plastic (though the document covers other materials):
The results confirm that mechanical recycling is the best waste management option in respect of the climate change potential, depletion of natural resources and energy demand impacts. The analysis highlights again that these benefits of recycling are mainly achieved by avoiding production of virgin plastics.
The environmental benefits are maximised by collection of good quality material (to limit the rejected fraction) and by replacement of virgin plastics on a high ratio (1 to 1).
Incineration with energy recovery performs poorly with respect to climate change impact
Landfill is confirmed as having the worst environmental impacts in the majority of cases.
As the UK moves to a lower-carbon energy mix, recycling will become increasingly favoured.
One of the studies said the costs of sorting made the benefits of plastic recycling negligible to iffy, confirming parent's claim that aluminum drives recycling value and plastics are a wash.
They shouldn't be allowed to call it a meta-analysis if they just read three studies and picked the conclusions they liked best.
They also found 20 papers that dealt with the climate change emissions and total energy use and ranked them on those factors as well.
The comment I replied to specifically said that we shouldn't worry about landfill space as we have more important issues like climate change, so that's 95% of studies found suggesting that opinion isn't based on facts and that landfill would be a worse option than recycling plastic for greenhouse gas emissions, which we've agreed is a serious problem. (And landfill broadly tied with burning it for energy on greenhouse gas emissions with different assumptions giving different answers).
To your point about total energy use, landfill comes out worst consistently and recycling best.
You could make the leap and assume the process that uses the least energy and releases the least greenhouse gases is also the least expensive economically (if you account for externalities) but that's a bonus on top of providing useful information that could change opinions related to greenhouse gas emissions.
You seem to doubt that governments made decisions based on facts, yet the facts now support their decision, while your stated beliefs about energy usage are contradicted by the science.
Is it not possible that the environmental benefits of recycling plastics had actually been considered by governments that brought in legislation? Where does your belief that it was ever considered likely to be a counterproductive activity come from? Did they convince you of anything else, like solar panels not making sense or EVs being worse for the environment, or wind turbines boondoggles? All those were similarly supported by effective government support programs and repaid the investment greatly.
> You seem to doubt that governments made decisions based on facts,
It's actually the reverse, I've become more skeptical because so many recycling programs are now just landfilling plastic because the costs no longer justify recycling it.
The price of oil should tell us something about the relative efficiency of recycling plastic. It would be weird if there was zero relation.
Oil prices being consistently low for a decade probably contribute to shifting efficiencies here.
I worry more generally about reuse and recycle heuristics since early environmental impact studies showed they frequently produce bad results. But that doesn't mean they always do.
Maybe you're right and those input factors haven't changed enough to affect the total cost math.
It is not. the paper you cited (thank you) was written in 2017. But more to the point, governments don’t work that way.
If in fact the reason for recycling is environmental benefit, we (USA anyway) would not be in the situation where we are putting plastics back in landfills, and we would not have been in the prior situation where we dump plastic and ewaste to other countries with no oversight whatsoever on what happens to it once it leaves our shores. the environmental impact is the same, here or there.
i very, very much doubt that said study existed at the time these decisions were made.
also the energy cost is a wash (or loss) for almost all but aluminum. glass would be fine but we are awash in glass, so AIUI cardboard and aluminum are the only consumer items worth recycling when consider energy and other input costs. i’ve no idea on total climate impact (eg greenhouse gas production) though and i don’t doubt you. i only doubt your assertion that governments made these decisions with that in mind.