Plastic recycling is really the scam here. Most plastics (from bottles to bags) cannot be recycled. We should be using much more glass which is very recyclable and can be made safer than before. The TV example is a bad one. Anyone who has worked with vacuum tubes knows those old TVs sucked power. The really wasteful entertainment appliance is the cable boxes everyone uses with digital cable. Those things could run off of a tiny bit of power but somehow they are made atrociously. Worst of all, consumers can't upgrade them to a more power efficient version because they're totally controlled by the cable company. Luckily people are ditching cable and these stupid boxes in record numbers.