That’s needlessly pessimistic, but I’ll believe general consumer recycling programs are not very effective.

• I know my composting program does something because I can give them food waste and get back compost
• I know can recycling works because there is an entire industry supporting it, plus aluminum is energy intensive and I’ve repeatedly read it is the most recycled material
• I know electronics recycling works because it’s expensive
• I believe industrial recycling works because they have bulk quantities of pure material and there’s generally profit somewhere.

Most of all I believe my city’s consumer recycling is fairly effective because of the number of things they have specific steps/actions/destinations for. More importantly we don’t have a landfill and the one we use is very expensive, so there’s a profit motive for minimizing what we dispose of