"Like using crazy amounts of fuel to truck, fly and ship a billion pounds of plastic garbage around the world."

As a former plastics recycling executive, I could write a book about this. I got into plastic recycling by accident, but I stayed in it because I thought I was doing good. Recycling plastic reduces our dependency on petroleum, right?

Yeah, well, that's not really how it works. It's a long story, but it boils down to ... there's very little point in bothering to sort your recycling. You might think you're helping the environment, but you're not. Returning plastic soda bottles instead of throwing them away is a great thing to do, but sorting out other kinds of plastic recyclables is almost meaningless.

A few people are getting rich on the margins, but we're not reducing our dependency on petroleum or doing anything about plastics pollution, which is a severe ecological problem that few people know anything about.

When people do hear about the problems, they're often urged to recycle, and maybe they feel good about doing that, like it's helping.

It isn't.