Woke folk are logic-impaired.
My town has had recycling for many years. Mind you, we don't have municipal trash collection but, for those of us who make the weekly Saturday pilgrimage to the transfer station (formerly sanitary landfill, and before that just "the dump"), we are expected to separate recyclables from "trash" and to deposit this into the appropriate dumpster. But the rules keep changing. At one time, newspaper had to be separate from magazines and office paper, and both had to be separate from corrugated cardboard. Non-corrugated cardboard was "trash." Now? All of the above go into the same dumpster.
Also in previous years, plastics went into one repository (but only two of the six classes), glass went into another (but, inexplicably, not green glass -- that was "trash"), and cans went into another. Now glass, all classes or recyclable plastic, and all glass go into the same dumpster.
We now also have a 40-foot storage container devoted to collecting computers, monitors, televisions, and printers. But you're not allowed to touch anything once it has been discarded.
As many of us know, though, the most effective way to recycle is to reuse, thereby keeping things out of the waste stream entirely. Other towns in my state recognize this and at their transfer stations have established areas, or even entire buildings, where people can deposit stuff that still works but that they don't want or need -- and other people can come in, pick through it, and take whatever they want, for free. I have suggested to my town government multiple times that we do this. I've given up suggesting it, because I have been summarily rejected each time I mentioned it. Apparently my town's governing politburo fears the notion of hoi polloi being attracted to our pristine utopian paradise by the siren song of our ... trash.