Recycling metals is good, especially aluminum. Recycling glass? Not bad. Recycling plastic? That is literally something the oil industry forced by having their resin codes look almost exactly like the recycling symbol. People understandingly confused the resin codes to mean it was recyclable and flooded recycling centers with plastic. So instead of throwing it in the garbage and telling people plastic is not recyclable, they did what they could to recycle it. Sorting and cleaning was a pain in the ass and made it not worth it…in the US. China was happy to accept it for a couple decades until a few years ago. Now most recycling centers only accept plastic with a reason code of 1 or 2. But people do not really check the number on the symbol. A lot of it is 5 which is not recyclable in the vast majority of places but people still toss that into recycling because they think it has the recycling symbol on it. So recycling centers have to sort that shit out and send it to the landfill. It is a massive waste of resources that the oil companies are fine with since people think they are doing their part.

Recycling in general though was not supposed to be a fix for climate change. While recycling things like aluminum is significantly more energy efficient than mining, the bigger issue there is the mine itself.