Ed Pawlowski wrote on Mon, 02 May 2016 18:34:34 -0400:

Congrats on not loading up landfills.
Not everyone takes recycling as far as you do. Some towns don't want
contaminated paper such as pizza boxes or saturated meat wrappers,
coated papers, anything with biological contamination. .

Our recycling here seems pretty open. I am sure we could put stuff
in there that they don't want but I've never known anyone to care what
goes into the recycling containers.

Some of the food you are composting is also good rodent bait. I prefer
to dispose of it than have animals finding it.

Everyone says that. We have deer. We have squirrels. We have birds.
We have bobcat. We have coyote. We have snakes. But, I don't think
I've ever seen a rat. (We do have a family of gophers or moles which
I want to go Bill Murray on, but that's a different story.)

Those Q-tips you are
putting in with the paper are not easily recycled, not to mention no one
want to pick off your earwax.

Seems to me that they mush that stuff up in water, and then press it dry,
and then use the fiber to make cardboard and paper.

I don't think the teeny tiny amount of earwax will make any difference
when it's mixed up with a ton of other similar paper products.

How about razor blades? Do you separate
the metal blade from the plastic? I don't, I toss one a month.

Razor blades are a good point. I recycle them. Plastic for the most part,
right?

I would think that they melt the plastic, and then they sieve or sink
out the contaminants (such as the metal blades). AT least if I were
running a recycling facility that's what I would do.

I'd use water on the paper and heat on the plastic.