Recycling is far from eco friendly or a closed loop system as you imply. It may slightly reduce the carbon footprint of consumption but it requires a great deal of energy to do so. From a GHG perspective, in many cases it is only slightly better it than manufacturing from virgin materials.

Those pop cans and cardboard boxes don't walk themself back to manufacturing plants and turn back into consumables products with no additional environmental costs. It takes a great deal of energy to get them back into your hands. And that comes at a huge energy cost regardless.