Have you been reading this thread at all? Basically, give me one good reason to recycle. All the reasons I’ve heard so far are probably bunk. That is the straight dope. In other words, my personal preference not to recycle is a much better reason not to recycle than any reason I’ve seen. Civic duty? Please. I suppose I should feel guilty if I don’t attend the state senate or city council meetings too.
Also, what does littering have to do with this at all? Littering is spreading filth in places that people live. It’s ugly and unsanitary. Taking garbage to a landfill is putting filth in a centralized place that has been chosen to have a minimal impact on people. That is where it should go.
Finally, even if it was wasteful to put recyclables in a landfill, the bottom line is that if those resources ever really became important, we could excavate the landfill. The truth is this waste is probably not even waste, and even if it is, it will never be important to our future.
All the time you spend recycling should be spent looking through a telescope for asteroids if you really care about our future.