Definitely some good reality checks in there.

Though I do wonder if it’s
all that bleak — I’ve read that cardboard and clean paper still recycle fairly well, depending on the system.
Still, the plastic situation sounds like a disaster either way. Maybe we just need to go full cyberpunk and live in metal cities with reusable everything.
The cardboard and clean paper is often, perhaps usually, baled. Any contamination in a bale and that bale is discarded. A pizza box, a little oil, etc. Many bales are OK, but a great proportion is not. And recycling the usable paper is more energy intensive than making new paper, notwithstanding that it's often not up to the quality standards that new-made paper is.
Unless the recycler is paying you for the material (metals, glass), it's almost definitely not a useful product and is being recycled at a loss, if at all.
As far as how bleak it is, I'm unsure, but I've heard it said by a reasonably reliable source that only 1000 square mi of landfill would hold all the world's trash for somehting like 100 years. While that's ~32mi on a side, it's
only 32mi on a side for the whole world. That number may not be exact, but it's likely close.
Dealing with toxic wastes is definitely another matter, but the developed countries already deal with these (mostly) ok... it's mostly developing nations that are
currently screwed up with these...
@StephanieD
Did I present you with this already?
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I saw that you had one earlier, and thought you might like this 'improved' one.