http://www.waste360.com/business/facing-reality-recycling-economics

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/06/03/michael-c-munger/recycling-can-it-be-wrong-when-it-feels-so-right

It is all over the internet - but common sense should open your eyes. Firstly our economy is tooled to produce new things, not recycle old, if we had the infrastructure it might make more sense, but we don't (and never will). Transporting, cleaning, processing, packaging, etc a piece of recycled garbage is very spendy, this is why we have this problem in the article, and it is only going to get worse as time goes on.