"Spurred on by green activists, governments have progressively expanded recycling to the point that it has now become a costly end-in-itself."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward-Piven_strategy

I was going to leave it there and not say anymore, but I thought I'd better do the right thing and actually read your article.

"The ACT in November 2011 also taxed "single-use" plastic bags."

- About here it starts to smell of 'agenda'

"A 2017 submission from the ACT's Minister for Transport and City Services claimed that:

...the ACT is one of the leading jurisdictions in waste management in Australia with around 70 per cent of waste generated in the ACT being reused or recycled."

70 per cent?
Now it's really starting to stink up the place.
You people need to learn to read between the lines.
- He's advertising meeting targets.

So what do we do?
We go to Google.com and we type this in:

'2030 waste and recycling' and we have a bit of a look-see.

Hmmm...

WA 2030 check

ohh... The National Waste Policy 2018
"The 2018 National Waste Policy provides a framework for collective action by businesses, governments, communities and individuals until 2030." check

http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/d523f4e9-d958-466b-9fd1-3b7d6283f006/files/national-waste-policy-2018.pdf

City of Sydney 2030 check

Waste: Australia to set six national targets to reduce waste ...
2030 check

Urban waste: Europe wants to recycle 70% by 2030
- Didn't we hear that 70% figure somewhere before?

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6103588/libs-declare-war-on-waste-with-203m-recycling-pitch/?cs=14350

"Prime Minister Scott Morrison will announce the policy on Friday with a promise to use the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to contribute half the funding. We will increase Australia's recycling rates, tackle plastic waste and litter, accelerate work on new recycling schemes and continue action to halve food waste by 2030," he said in a statement ahead of the announcement."

So they want to take away funding towards clean energy production and spend it towards garbage;

And the bigger picture is we're doing more harm than good to ourselves trying to meet global targets...

Sorry Brendan I'm calling it quits;
I should've trusted my instincts...

It seemed like a pretty good article but you forgot one thing:

CLOWARD AND PIVEN!!

[Cont.]

Why do we vote?
It's all been decided for us, we're on the 2030 schedule?
How did they get every single person in the western world to somehow ALL vote for the same thing?

It's rigged you idiots.
There is no democracy, it's already all decided.

One important positive of drink container deposits: Where this has been in place , especially for many years in South Australia, there are not many lying around as litter on country roadsides especially. Are probably only thrown out by a small percentage of the population but leave an enormous overall mess. With a deposit of 10 cents per container, many of the litterbugs normally inclined to throw them out of vehicles as they travel are more likely to hang onto them. Even if only to give to someone else to cash. Then there are some like kids and pensioners who are more inclined to pick them up for pocket money.

Over the last 40 years, I have often stopped and picked up rubbish - mainly drink bottles and cans largely on around 12 km of roadsides bordering and near our own family farming properties. They are relatively clean compared with most others in the area. On sections of main road not far away, would be easy to find and collect over 500 containers per kilometre. It is not obvious how many are there until you have a go at the continually recurring job of picking them up. Then noting the overall time it takes picking up and later sorting and disposing /recycling of these containers divided by the number of them, would need more like 20 cents each to earn wages rates. Think how long it takes to stop, walk to pick up one or two and walk back. Even if often after stopping you also see and collect more nearby.

Overall I think that some recycling such as this is well justified if only to reduce littering, even if real value of stuff collected is low. eg A while ago I took a large number of squashed aluminium cans to a scrap dealer. Price received worked out at something like one cent per can. Maybe one way of looking at environmental positive though is apparently several times as much energy - largely electricity is consumed producing aluminium from its bauxite ore as for recycling scrap aluminium.