Yea there was a great two part planet money series on recycling this year. And the economic take away is that the current state of recycling in the US is broken and we have more than enough landfill space for thousands of years. One idea was to just burn it which this mentioned is what some European countries are doing.

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-b...

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-shou...