What happens when you accidentally put something in the recycling that isn’t meant to be recycled? Does it contaminate the entire batch? (side note: same question for Composting)

Question

I know that composting and recycling are fundamentally and scientifically different but my curiosity is the same.

In: Other

Answer 1

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.