As a biologist with a specialisation in ecology, my opinion is that....

Recycling is RUBBISH.


Let me clarify.
The PRINCIPLES of most current RECYCLING SCHEMES are abysmally bad for the environment. The agenda is set by accountants and people whose purpose is to create a financial result and not by anyone who understands how the environment works.
Recycling certain materials makes sense for the environment. Anything which is a NON-RENEWABLE RESOURCE (metals, plastics) should be recycled.

Metals can be melted down and turned into new metal products. If this is not done, raw metal must be mined and eventually the supplies run out.

Plastics are made by the petrochemical industry. In fact most of the oil produced goes into producing plastics. Petrol is essentially a waste product of the plastics industry. I've never understood why, when crude oil prices go up, plastic products remain the same price but petrol prices rocket (and diesel fuel is made from Rape Seed Oil and has never seen an oilfield so shouldn't go up in price at all).
Plastics can be melted down and reprocessed into new plastics. Once the crude oil is gone where will the plastics come from?

Paper comes from fast growing softwood trees (It is NOT made from Tropical Rainforest Hardwoods and has nothing to do with deforestation). Global warming is due to too much carbon dioxide free in the atmosphere. Our battle should be to grow fast growing trees, converting carbon dioxide to cellulose, and then make sure that it is NOT converted back to carbon dioxide.
If you re-pulp paper and turn it into new paper the result is that new trees are not grown and the carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere causing the warming. Re-pulping is the solution of accountants to save cash. The re-pulped paper must be bleached before it becomes useable and so causes pollution problems. It is BAD for the environment and CREATES global Warming. It is not the solution of ecologists.
My personal solution would be to encourage planting of "paper" forests. Convert the wood to paper, encourage business (tax incentives) to make all packaging out of paper/cardboard instead of plastics. Collect the waste paper but then bale it into giant bales, take them out to deep ocean and sink them to the bottom of the sea. Once at the bottom of the sea where it is too cold for them to rot, the carbon will not return as carbon dioxide. In a couple of million years it could be new coal deposits.

Just a small rant.
Quack!
Geoff.