The recycling industry in the U.S. is collapsing because China has started refusing American trash. 10 years ago, America's largest export to China was garbage. The U.S. has no recycling infrastructure because it has relied on China to take its garbage for the past half century. Even though there are still recycling bins outside your home that the garbage truck comes to pick up, it ends up in the landfill with your regular garbage. Sorting plants across the U.S. are shutting down because there is no longer anywhere to send our recyclables to.
To be frank, I think if you were truly invested in the environment you would have already known this (and not elected Trump, who has rolled back 78 Obama-era environmental regulations to date). It was all over the news earlier this year when China declared its new policy. It's so much easier to put the blame and responsibility on someone else than it is to change your own life and habits, which is why people in the first world cling to this idea about the burden of environmentalism resting on the third world rather than researching and considering their own role in contributing to environmental pollution. For example, do you wear polyester, nylon, or acrylic clothing? Those are all plastic-based fabrics, and every time you wash your clothes the plastics leech into the water, which eventually ends up in the ocean. In addition, the U.S. is still the second-largest per-capita CO2 emitter, as well as the [largest](https://www.plasteurope.com/members/bilder/p210080b.gif) consumer and manufacturer of plastics in the world.
