It would be better to only allow a small list of approved plastics for uses like packaging with much more obvious labeling to distinguish them (e.g. require a particular color or very clear markings), more carefully regulate mixed/composite materials, charge manufacturers an extra cleanup tax for whatever materials they use, and try to carefully regulate many types of single-use plastics out of existence in favor of biodegradable or environmentally neutral alternatives (as a trivial example, there's no good excuse for candy wrappers to involve plastic), and force every municipal trash collector to also collect "compost" including food waste, soiled cardboard, and biodegradable plastics.
It should be possible for relatively incompetent consumers to tell at a glance precisely which plastic something is made of and figure out how to sort all of their recyclable plastic waste into 2 or 3 categories.
* * *
Or at a higher level, there should be some people with significant systems thinking training doing full society-wide audits of the sources and treatment of materials including plastics, and then regulators should be making targeted policy to fix harms (whether environmental, human health, economic, ...), starting with the most significant ones and working their way down from there.
It should be possible for relatively incompetent consumers to tell at a glance precisely which plastic something is made of and figure out how to sort all of their recyclable plastic waste into 2 or 3 categories.
Do you honestly think that would be sufficient? I expect you'd get significant amounts of the wrong material in all the bins.
This is why we should get rid of as many of the distinct types and uses of plastic as possible, with the remaining ones as non toxic as possible, and some kind of explicit tax on manufacturers to pay whatever is necessary to handle all of the costs of cleanup.
If there were 2 types of plastic packaging and they were very obviously visually distinct, it would be much easier for anyone involved in the process to sort them (whether at home or at a recycling plant) compared to the current system with hundreds of distinct types of often visually indistinguishable mixed-material packaging much of which we can't do anything with except chuck it in a landfill.
It should be possible for relatively incompetent consumers to tell at a glance precisely which plastic something is made of and figure out how to sort all of their recyclable plastic waste into 2 or 3 categories.
* * *
Or at a higher level, there should be some people with significant systems thinking training doing full society-wide audits of the sources and treatment of materials including plastics, and then regulators should be making targeted policy to fix harms (whether environmental, human health, economic, ...), starting with the most significant ones and working their way down from there.