I know where I live we went to a recycling program. It seemed good at first, well it was sold to residents that way.
it started out with the small blue bin similar to the hand baskets at the grocery store. But people complained they were not big enough and the wind blew the cardboard around. They wanted to recycle more products.
A couple of years later we get this great large blue bin program, along with yard waste disposal.
We paid a higher fee for the recycle bin in the name of recycling. Two years later it is found out that there is no customer to buy, use or recycle over 75% of the material we were told to recycle. It ended up in the dump. The other 25% ish was being sent to larger plants and most of it was being burnt, dumped or shipped over seas to be burnt. It worked out that 10 maybe 15% of the material being recycled was actually getting a small chance to do so.
As for the yard waste program, we set it out they collect it, take it to the waste station and burn it in a pile. People were under the impression it was all being recycled by compost.
Recycling has to have a customer, most things can not be recycled in the sense to be reused unless a purpose built plant is made to do so. That takes lots of money and clients to do so.
Waste to fuel is a good process for now until we figure it out cheaper and better.