In 2012 it was easy to convince people to recycle. Recycling was a boom industry, everyone was making money. The profits made an easy case for cities to promote recycling over sending it with the trash to the landfill. Today cities have to pay waste haulers to take their recycling, much like they pay to take the rest of the trash to the landfill or the green waste facility. These are services that result in less volume being buried in the landfill, but more difficult to sell the idea of recycling to those who can't see the benefit of not burying our trash. Try finding out data about waste and the EPA's site hasn't been updated with stats since 2015. In the end, I believe that waste to energy plants will become more efficient at combusting our trash, but at what costs to the environment when our EPA regulations are are not rigorous enough?
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/china-has-stopped-accepting-our-trash/584131/
https://earther.gizmodo.com/recycling-is-broken-1833063010/amp?fbclid=IwAR0h5Io7bPjH1Y-b93RTqPPj3Vyw1kQDt8fOKfCqDJ_OzQRbaCyIDmeMXWw
https://www.oskaloosa.com/news/local_news/landfill-tipping-fees-increase/article_e64161d5-12fb-5b93-bcc0-a04fffaf13ef.html
