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The DARK SCAM of Recycling and Why People Still Do It

The DARK SCAM of Recycling and Why People Still Do It

The origin of recycling myth and the dirty economics behind it

Kartik Vyas & Gen Kimura
February 26, 2026

What’s in This Week’s Issue…

Good morning. You've been sorting your trash for decades, convinced you're saving the planet one plastic bottle at a time.

Turns out, the companies who invented that little recycling symbol knew it didn’t work from day one. They ran the numbers in the 1970s and discovered recycling plastic doesn't work economically or practically.

Then they spent $50 million a year convincing you otherwise.

So this week…

🏆 The Big Play: How the plastic industry built a guilt machine that profits when recycling fails
💪 The Power Move: Why the real scam isn't that recycling doesn't work, it's who pays when it doesn't
💵 Follow the Money: How a cartel boss's death led to violence in Mexico

-GEN

🏆 The Big Play

The biggest money power story of the week.

If Recycling Is a Scam…Why Do We Still Do It?

They did such a good job that in survey after survey, people continue to show a preference for recycling

Here's what actually happens to that bottle you carefully rinsed and sorted: only about 9% of all plastic ever produced has been recycled.

The rest? In landfills, oceans, and according to recent studies, your bloodstream, and even your testicles.

But the genius wasn't in making recycling work. It was in making you believe it did.

1. The Permission Slip Economy

In 1988, the plastics industry introduced those three little arrows you recognize instantly. The ones that made you feel responsible.

But here's what they didn't advertise:

Those symbols include numbers 1 through 7, but only 1 and 2 are actually recyclable.
The industry knew most people wouldn't bother learning what the numbers meant.
Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of Plastics Industry, admitted: "If the public thinks recycling is working, then they're not going to be as concerned about the environment".

This wasn't education. It was strategic misdirection. The symbol became what it was always meant to be: permission for the industry to keep producing and permission for you to keep consuming without guilt.

When two-thirds of Americans still believe that symbol means their plastic gets a second life, you know the marketing worked exactly as intended.

A plastic recycling propaganda from 1991

2. The Backwards Incentive Machine

When garbage trucks arrive at landfills, they pay a tipping fee. In 2023, that fee averaged $57 per ton. A single large landfill can generate $40 million annually just from these fees. Once the infrastructure exists, every additional truckload is nearly pure profit.

Now connect these dots:

Only two companies control almost half of America's landfills.
These same companies have bought up recycling facilities across the country.
Wall Street analysts openly stated in 1999 that "less recycling growth is positive for landfill operators".

Waste Management doesn't just handle your trash. They control both sides of the equation: they run the recycling centers that don't need to work efficiently, and the landfills that profit when recycling fails.

The incentive structure isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed, just not for you.

3. The Export Scam and What Came Home

For decades, America solved its recycling problem by not solving it. We just shipped it overseas. China was processing nearly half the world's plastic waste, accepting roughly 4,000 containers daily from the US alone.

Then in 2018, China said no more:

Plastic shipments to China dropped 95% overnight, from 4,000 to 100 containers per day.
US cities immediately stopped recycling programs.
Plastic sent to American landfills jumped 23%.

Philadelphia's response revealed the playbook. Unable to afford recycling costs, the city sent half its waste to Waste Management landfills and burned the other half. But not in Philadelphia.

They shipped it to Chester, Pennsylvania, a town where one in three people lives in poverty and 70% of residents are Black. Chester now houses one of America's largest trash incinerators. The smell alone is a health hazard.

Similar patterns emerged nationwide.

For years, the US had been counting millions of tons as "recycled" simply because it left the country. Much of it was being burned or dumped overseas. The recycling rates America reported to the world were never real.

And the plastic that didn't get burned? Researchers found it in human blood for the first time in 2022. Then in placentas. Then in the testicles. Then, in brain tissue, plastic particles now make up 0.48% of your brain's weight. If current trends continue, the concentration of plastics inside our bodies will double every 10 to 15 years.

The recycling wasn't happening. It was just being moved around until it ended up inside you.

💪 The Power Moves

Playbook for understanding the game of power.

The Real Scam Behind Recycling and What You Could Do

The truth about the three arrows

The recycling symbol never represented a solution. It represented a transfer of responsibility from the companies creating the problem to you, the person living with the consequences.

This is the playbook across every major industry: create a problem → make it your fault → then profit from selling you the illusion of a solution.

Their pattern is always the same: shift accountability downward, create emotional pressure through guilt, then monetize both the problem and the performance of caring about it.

The plastic industry didn't need recycling to work. They needed you to think it worked so you'd keep buying without demanding systemic change.

So here’s what you could do:

Aluminum and glass actually work, so keep sorting those.
But for plastic, the math is simple: the less you buy, the less ends up in landfills, oceans, and your bloodstream.