In article ,
"tim....." writes:

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
In article ,
David writes:
Just something that has been knocking about in my mind for a while.

With the current domestic recycling there are some plastics which can be
recycled and some which can't.

For example, moulded plastic food trays are marked as recyclable, but the
label often says that the plastic covering film is not.
For meats, bacon, and many other foods the covering film is sealed to the
rim of the plastic tray, so that it is virtually impossible to remove all
the film.
So the tray is recyclable but with a small amount of non-recyclable
plastic fused to the rim.

Does this render the whole thing non-recyclable, and thus destined for
land fill? Or is a small percentage of contamination acceptable? Or is
most of the stuff we put in blue bins just for show and goes to land fill
anyway?

In most cases, small amounts of contamination reduce the value of
the reclaimed plastic - it means there are some things it can't be
used for, but less critical things it still can.

so employee "professional" to sort it properly, relying on amateurs to guess
is just dumb

Some councils did kerbside sorting by trained staff.
I think that's all gone now - the quality of the sorted results were
good, but the labour cost was prohibitive and almost certainly outweighed
any additional value of the separated recyclables.

Like I said, automated sorting can separate out most of the plastic
types nowadays, although that may not yet be operating in all areas.

--
Andrew Gabriel
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