That mentality, combined with the spinelessness of US government and corruption by industry, nicely sums up the article: it can't be improved, we'll have to live with the pollution!

It's just much more difficult to separate stuff after everything is mixed up, like it says in the article.

Most European countries show that it is possible to do much better. I have to separate plastics/cans, glass, paper, vegetables and non-recyclables (5 streams). And the occasional batteries/electronics. Really, it's not that hard, if you furnish for it. In my household, the non-recyclable waste has shrunk to just one garbage bag every two weeks, for a family of four.

And still I think much should be improved, starting with much stricter regulation for packaging. We still dispose a lot of plastics, around 3 medium size bags every two weeks. Just forbid (or tax into oblivion) single-use plastics entirely, and let the food and retail industries innovate their packaging/distribution/fulfillment using paper, carton, bio-plastics, glass or re-usable.

Much should be improved, and everyone should play their part. Maybe there is a startup idea servicing people who just refuse to do so?

> spinelessness of US government and corruption by industry

There are beneficiaries to this negligence and they are handsomely profiting (and giving their cronies in Congress campaign contributions) while the world starts to resemble the one in Wall-E more and more.

Campaign finance reform and fixing broken electoral processes has the best probability to exposing and removing the corruption.