I work in the plastic injection moulding industry and for us it works out cheaper to send waste product to landfill, than to recycling. We do try and reuse what we can (by regrinding) but a lot of the plastics properties change once moulded once.
Personally at home we recycle everything that’s possible, buy most of our meat, eggs and vegetables from within a three mile radius.
Unfortunately I also have to travel 80 miles a day to work and back, though I do usually run a car into the ground and it’s not worth anything.
I do agree that if everyone did a little bit it would add up to a large amount. Think more needs to be done on educating the population.