Look into your municipality’s recycling process, see how it’s done, what the inputs are, what the total energy use is, etc, etc.

I’d bet a year’s salary it’s far less effective (if at all) than most people think.

“Recycle” was/is a marketing grift developed by the oil industry in the 70’s. It largely isn’t effective.

As someone else mentioned, aluminum (and steel) are very recyclable, and are already extensively recycled in manufacturing (don’t forget that reusing scrap within a factory is considered recycling).

Everything else largely isn’t, yet (glass is very recyclable, but the transport costs are exorbitant, so I suspect it’s a negative for things like drink bottles, the energy costs on most plastic recycling makes it not yet viable, from what I’ve read).

Someday, just not today.

If the 3 R’s, Reduce is the one that truly makes a difference.