Do you have references for that? There are many challenges involved in recycling, and it's certainly far more valuable to reduce consumption and increase re-use, but any review I've seen still shows recycling having a significant net environmental benefit.
No that's basically exactly what I mean. If you really care about the environment you'll reduce consumption. If you sort of feel bad about the environment, you'll sort your trash but keep buying mountains of throwaway products that can be nominally reclaimed. It's still a massive waste of time, effort and material even if somebody can reclaim the material for other worthless products like direct-mail flyers or whatever later. There is no path to sustainability that does not entail consuming less.
Only certain materials are truly valuable - they're the ones people pay to recycle. Metal-based recycling is incredibly valuable to the population and environment.
And on top of that, it's valuable enough that you don't need to worry about it, because eventually someone will mine the trash for the metals they need.
