It varies very widely indeed. In some countries it isn't a scam because it gets burned like Denmark but other than that majority of recycling just means shipping it to a landfill in a poor country that they promise to recycle.

In Hungary it gets sorted out locally. We also recently implemented a bottle return system that (although it's annoying) produces clean stacks of PET, aluminium and glass, all of which are recyclable.

Well, it depends a lot on material.

Metals, especially aluminum, get widely recycled because it actually makes financial sense.

Plastics, well, you are probably better off burning them for electricity.

> because it gets burned

I wouldn’t really call that recycling.