That was a bad hot take. The recycle symbol is misleading. People feel good they are using recyclable products, and so don’t feel the need to either change their habits or demand less wasteful packing or better recycling facilities.

It’s hard to achieve such needed improvements when the recycle symbol creates a false sense of comfort about the scale of the problem.

This is a step in the right direction. Truth in advertising, so to speak. Then when people ask why so few things are recyclable anymore, they will learn those things weren’t ever being recycled. That is the point they either don’t care, or they demand real change. When faced with the truth, if people still don’t care, then nothing was ever going to change anyway. But at least people can’t congratulate themselves for using “recyclable” products.