That is your problem shadows...you talk in broken circles of delusion and anecdotal history, yet propose preposterous solutions.
No city has ever done what you proclaim is the solution. Pay attention.
You are no Thomas Edison.
The problem is the lack of insight as how or why you are assigned to this planet. Within your shallow reasoning are all of us to believe that the combining of the elements that created this body we are guest in cannot be used to destroy it? We have created this monster of a enormous amount of waste by combining and allow the unqualified to protect the society to assemble and disassemble these elements on which we were created or evolved. The recycling of these element provided to us by creation on this single planet in possibly three trillion other solar systems is not only simple but cost effective relative to sustaining this event called life. The engineering design of reclaiming what we are destroying is of the very simplest of grade school engineering.
Thomas Edison dropped out of school at the 4th grade level. There is some who has the foresight to develop a system that will extend our existence. Bill Gates dropped out of college at the second year. Many others can be cited that inherent the foresight of complex design but we cannot establish a simple cost efficient design to separate reclaimable items and return them to their source.
True, I am not a rebirth of Thomas Edison but the design of reclaiming would be a simple engineering problem still to obtain one would require a bureaucracy $250,000 study on feasibility; a search of engineering firms at $200,000; $250,000 travel expense to see how others were recycling, a $50 million plant with a value of $5 million, hiring 10 employees and 30 supervisors/ inspector all based on market of recycle materials could produce a profit of up to $ 300,000 thousand for the city.
All this in a city of millionaires running to be its mayor spending hundreds thousand of dollars on campaigns.
The time has come the Walrus said, to speak of many things, Of shoes of ships, of sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.