And then you're supposed to
wash the plastic if it's a food container, which completely defeats the point of recycling. There's no way individuals hand-washing plastic bottles with hot water and detergent aren't wasting significantly more water and energy in total than a centralized solution would, and you can't rely on people doing it anyway, because it makes dealing with trash two orders of magnitude more complicated.
I actually suspect that even with actually recyclable materials, if individuals have to wash them before giving for recycling, it would be a net benefit for the planet for them to just throw that trash into a landfill.
