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Being wasteful is generally bad, but changing consumer behaviour is mostly a distraction from industrial resource use. I can't believe we still waste so much time and effort on "recycling" plastic water bottles when there are so many things that would be orders of magnitude more useful, if only we were willing and able to upset large companies.

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Something I like about the recycling scheme for single-use plastic and aluminium cans here in Germany is a secondary aspect: It reduces littering of those. I remember the decades before the scheme and it a least reduced this.

(But we need a deposit on cigarette butts..)

Of all the schemes I've seen I think the German Pfand system works the best. Solid re-usable bottles, and a small but nontrivial cash incentive to return bottles.

Amusingly Ireland recently implemented a half-assed version of the same thing, but the bottles are flimsy and must be in perfect condition upon return. The machine (if it works) just gives vouchers for whatever supermarket has placed it in their car park, and the charges are stupid (tiny cans of tonic have a deposit as high as the original price).

The slogan is "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" in that order.

industrial resource use is to indirectly fulfill individual demand. Recycling might be a sham but reducing individual consumption would make a difference.

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