TL;DR:

(1) In terms of global impact, the amount recycled is in some ways completely irrelevant (namely, recycling does nothing for the pollution that never even makes it into the waste disposal system to begin with). It's overall far more significant to reduce consumption. Given that recycling is not as efficient as we thought, it's even more significant to reduce consumption.

(2) Recycling only reduces the cost of creating an item, it does not bring that cost to zero. Not using that item in the first place brings that cost to zero. Someone could feel good about buying a recycled glass bottle, because it was recycled - but they could feel even better if they found one and re-used it instead.

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> This problem is routinely being solved by mostly boring but useful heavy machinery. The non-serious players talk about "green" and "eco" and want "awareness". The serious players in recycling talk about tons per hour.

After reflecting on this a bit, I wanted to leave a more direct and interesting comment on why I think the OP is suffering from what the article is decrying and is focusing exclusively on recycling.

Namely, the efficiency of recycling and trash-sorting does nothing for the pollutants that never even make it into the waste disposal system. This is the point, that is the problem, that is why reducing is more effective than recycling. Recycling does nothing for micro-plastics contaminating every known environment on the planet, pollution of rivers, etc.. The industries that create the products that can be recycled still generate this type of waste (and air pollution, and there are costs with transport, etc...).

This made me wonder, what if the recycling efficiency were 0% (everything is sent to landfill). There are plenty of landfills (at least in the US) - so that at least is not a problem.

*Which raises the question, why recycle at all?*

I think the answer is because the marginal cost of recycling some items is cheaper than creating it from scratch (cheaper from both a cost and a pollution perspective). For example, the 'cost' of an item that is produced via recycling might be 70% what it would be to create it from new. Never even using that new item in the first place is clearly more impactful than anything that can be done with recycling.

Let's take another example where someone could use 10 units of an item. If 10 are brand new, the consumption cost is 1000% of one new item. If 5 are brand new, and with that 70% recycling cost, 5 are recycled, the cost is 850%. Now let's say we can cut consumption by 20% and only need 8 of those items. Even if all 8 of those items are brand new, we are still better off compared to anything we could do with recycling.

Now, combine all of this with the recycling being less effective and less efficient then what it was sold (it was a bill of goods! It turns out that 70% cost for some items is over 100%, the recycling is inefficient and more costly than creating it from scratch), and the importance of reducing & re-using is even higher - arguably to the point where you'll be doing far more good if you throwing everything away in landfill as long as you are also reducing overall consumption. On the other hand, full & over-consumption & recycling badly is about the worst of all worlds, which is roughly where we are today because the focus on reducing & re-using has been lost in the recycling noise.

With all that said, recycling still has a place considering many recycled items are cheaper to produce than using one that is brand new. The point is the same though, the biggest drivers are not using the item to begin with (and thus reducing/re-using).