That may have been the intent, but that wasn't the result.

Even though recycling is supposed to be the last resort, it was treated as an effective solution on its own instead. Less attention was paid to "reduce" and "reuse" and most of the attention was focused on "recycle"

Because “recycling” is easy if you just ship it to China and then they dump it in the ocean. Reducing and reusing take real effort and change in behavior.

If people had to recycle for real it would be more challenging and then reduce and reuse would be considered more often.

Post-consumer recycling also takes real effort, most of it from individuals. It just turns out to be largely wasted effort.

“Reduce, reuse” is part of the old saying but it was never heard, because it was never advertised. The entities that could afford advertising, or afford lobbying for it, have more riding on the recycle piece of that—-because reduce and reuse doesn’t pay their bills. Or their salaries and bonuses.

Nobody wants to reduce their own consumption and the disposable, single use, “it’s not clean if it doesn’t come shrink wrapped in a plastic wrapper” mindset has all but destroyed “reuse”. All that’s left is lying to the public that recycling will make up the difference.

> Recycling has been sold from the very beginning as being the option of last resort.

Maybe in the most literal reading of that slogan, but a claim like this could really use some substantiation.

That ordering is a key part of the waste hierarchy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy

I recall the message in the catchy jingle as "recycle, reduce, reuse"

Realistically, it probably makes sense to reuse plastic waste as fuel, if it's not economical to recycle it. But burning plastic is frowned upon.

> I recall the message in the catchy jingle as "recycle, reduce, reuse"

If it's the one I remember, resolving the words of the next line was surprisingly ambiguous, with the two popular options being "...and close the loop" or "...and don't pollute"

This used to be a TV commercial during the 90s/early 00s (I think?). The jingle was definitely "Recycle, Reduce, Reuse...and close the loooooop", the loop being the little recycle triangle logo thing.

The mantra should have included "... in that order!"

The logo on every recycling bin is literally arrows that explain the order.