I know that composting and recycling are fundamentally and scientifically different but my curiosity is the same.
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It depends on what it is that was put into the recycling. It’s possible that it can contaminate other recyclables but it’s not necessarily the case.
For example, if you put a piece of styrofoam into the recycling it’ll just get sorted out at the recycling plant and thrown away. If you throw a can of paint into the recycling and it leaks, it may cause the effected items to no longer be any good.
The same is essentially true of compost. It really depends on what it is you throw in there. If it’s something toxic that can’t be removed, then it’ll contaminate your compost. If it’s just a piece of solid waste like a tin can, you can just pick it out.
* All items collected as “recycling” are sorted and cleaned if necessary.
* Recently the economics that make recycling work have shifted so that many places, while still collecting “recycling” items, still just put them in the landfill.
* They still collect things separately because it helps keep people trained to sort things properly.
* When the economics shift back again, the folks at home just keep doing the same thing and the collection people can switch where they send the recycled materials.
I disagree with the top answer. Much recycling does get contaminated, and it is a big issue. Especially for places that do mixed recycling together. You can’t clean paper that gets covered with your yogurt. Even if the container that came in can be easily cleaned.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/recycling-contamination-1.4606893
It depends on the recycling center, and what you tossed in. They generally always have to do manual sorting, as we’re terrible about knowing what to recycle, and what not to recycle. Depending on what you add, it may be sent to the landfill itself, contaminate the load and send a bunch of stuff off to the landfill, or potentially even cause problems in the machinery.
A common example are plastic bags, like those you get from the grocery store. These can be recycled in certain circumstances (usually you can drop them off at the store they came from), but often not process where your curbside recycling is picked up. If you throw your recyclables away in such a bag, it could result in the entire load being pitched to the landfill (with the added un-green result of an additional trip for a heavy smog producing vehicle).
Here in Orange County, FL it does contaminate the entire batch. Up to 85% of recycled material ends up going to the landfill…https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.clickorlando.com/news/2019/11/26/heres-why-recyclables-in-orange-county-are-going-to-the-dump/%3foutputType=amp
I worked in a prototype plastics recycling plant many, many years ago. They only recycled soda bottles that were made out of PET plastic.
The bales of crushed bottles were shredded, washed, and made into pellets that were sold to be eventually turned into new products like carpet fibers.
The main problem was separating the contaminants. This doesn’t just mean unwanted trash in the recycling stream, it actually included the labels and caps from the bottles themselves. At the time, there were still bottles made with aluminum caps so they could be separated out and sold for probably more than the plastic pellets. But the rest of the stuff was unwanted waste.
The biggest problem however was that a substantial percentage of the caps used a liner that was made out of PVC plastic. PVC does not melt at the same temperature as PET. It clogs up the machines that extrude the pellets and discolors the pellets when it burns.
I only worked there for a few months so I don’t know how (or if) they solved the PVC contamination problem. I don’t think currently manufactured bottles use PVC cap liners anymore so it’s probably not a problem like it was. Though older bottles could still easily find their way into recycling streams.
Depends on where you live. In my area, dozens are paid to sift through the piles because of slobs. In the best case, their bin is skipped and tagged at pickup, and the slobs learn to be more careful next week. In the worst case, batches of recyclables are diverted to regular trash because of contamination (oily paper, messy food containers). Ultimately, the actual recycling centers further down the line will get cleaner material.
Compost is somewhat easier because you can magnetize for ferrous metals, and other non-organics are easy to spot. Some companies may even have fancy optical sorters that can scan shredded material for rejects, and airblow them to a separate pile.
I’m not an expert in this topic but what I do know is that a huge percentage of what people recycle ends up in landfills anyway because some things cannot be recycled together, not just because it’s hard to separate them or takes extra work, it’s literally impossible. Paper products that are covered in grease or food can not be cleaned and therefor cannot be recycled. That pizza box with a greasy bottom goes in the trash, the clean cardboard box that your amazon package came in goes in the recycling. Mix the two together and you risk getting grease all over the amazon box. It may seem simple enough for you to pick the pizza box out of the good cardboard in your bin, but multiply that by the recycling of 50 thousand people in a city and suddenly the chances of contamination on good recyclables increases tremendously, AND the cost of attempting to sort the products increases tremendously – essentially making recycling useless. There are only so many things that can sort and remove contamination from different materials, and a good majority of people do not understand this. That’s why most recycling bins are extremely – to the point of being fury inducing usually – strict on what is and is not allowed inside the bin.
Y’all are going to hate this, but I worked for several park districts. We put out garbage and recycling cans, but everything goes in the trash.
Recycling company won’t take bagged recyclables. We aren’t going to take the time or biohazard risk to cut and dump each bag individually. Recycling bags are 10x more discussing than garbage bags. Fermented 1/2 Starbucks cups sitting out in the sun for over a week. 🤮🤮🤮
In my town the rules about what is recycled are very strict- all containers have to be cleaned thoroughly and all caps removed, even those stupid rings around the tops, no black plastic, no foam of any kind, no bags of any kind, … Paper can’t be shiny or oily ( no pizza boxes, or drink cartons)… In addition, we don’t have trash collection so we have to take our trash to dump sites ( which are only open for 4 hours a week) where there is a person looking over your shoulder as you dump things loose into bins and picks out things….
With all this, apparently still 70-100% of the recycling from our town ends up in land fills…. It really blows my mind how inefficient it all is…
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