Edmonton was the first city in Canada to set up a formal recycling program. The reason at that time: the current landfill was filling up and there was lots of political fallout with building a new one.

I believe in recycling and served on our recycling board for many years. I experienced more than a few economic absurdities with recycling. Trying to address those absurdities requires a much bigger plan than what we could muster at the local level. In all that time, I did not see our governments ever taking recycling seriously and advancing it to the next stage.

It's time for a new system of governance:

https://medium.com/discourse/tiered-democratic-governance-3f36a8f45660