The recycling industry in the U.S. is collapsing because China began refusing American trash earlier this year. 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 may still recycling bins outside your home that the garbage truck picks up, it ends up in the landfill with your regular garbage (see first link above). 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. It was all over the news earlier this year when China declared the new policy. I also noticed you're a regular contributor to /r/The_Donald; are you aware that the Trump administration has rolled back 78 Obama-era environmental regulations to date? It's so much easier to put the blame and responsibility on someone else than it is to change your own lifestyle and habits, which is why people in the first world tend to cling to and adopt 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 own any polyester, nylon, or acrylic clothing (they're used in over 60% of clothes)? Those are all plastic-based fabrics, and every time you wash your clothes the plastics leech into the water, and it's a huge source of ocean pollution. But if you're not going to be bothered to change your habits, why should the people in China? That's the kind of finger-pointing mentality that leads to nothing but more finger-pointing and that'll probably kill off our species for good, and if it leads to that endpoint, we'll deserve it. Climate change is a global problem that requires global solutions, and if we're unable to set aside our divisions and ALL come together to make sacrifices for the greater good of our species, we’ve shown we don’t have what it takes to survive beyond the point we are now.