"Andrew Gabriel" wrote in message
...
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.

of course it's not cost effective

for every 5 minutes of sorting they are doing 5 minutes of collecting and 5
minutes of travelling. It needs to be arranged so that trained sorters sort
and the other task are done by other staff

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

I must have missed that bit. My initial comment wasn't referring to the use
of manual labour over technology, I was referring to the practice of LAs to
expect residents to be qualified sorters and then having the gall to try and
fine you if you turn out to be useless at it

tim