To ask how you sort your recycling

[Figmentofmyimagination]

Where we live you can just drop it all in a big orange bin, and I often eg stuff lids or paper cartons into tins or drop the day's recycling into the bin in one of those biodegradable supermarket bags. I rinse it out usually. But I heard Gillian Reynolds recently on the radio talking about how eg I should be removing coloured lids from milk bottles etc. How does recycling work? Is it really all sorted by hand on a conveyor belt? Wondering whether I should make an effort to sort it better before binning it and whether if I don't, what happens to my recycling.

I saw a European government film on recycling, featuring teaching a couple of chimps to sort "if chimps can learn to do it in 5 mins, why can't you?" and thought at the time it wouldn't work in the UK, where every Council uses different colours for different things. Every time you go on holiday or move house, you have to learn a whole new system. Our council only recycles plastics if the number in the recycling symbol on the bottom is a power of 2.

It's amazing how little uniformity there is. Crazy!

I need to know more about the milk. I have never heard of this.

chelle is absolutely right about the milk thing - I’ve just googled it.

So that’s me told.

We have one big recycling wheelie bin.
I have a big bag in the kitchen that fits into a book that the recycling goes into and then gets emptied into the wheelie when it’s full. I’m a bit shit at remembering to wash stuff out but will be trying harder after this. I always assumed it got washed before it was recycled at the planet iykwim.

I’m off to google about pouring milk down the sink. DD is only one that drinks it/uses it so we often have it gone off and needing rid of. Makes me feel sick so I have to run hot water as I do so....

"In Wales the bin men sort the recycling by hand into a large truck."

Not in this corner of Wales they don't (the capital city bit). I think you're just generalising from what happens in your council. Here we bag it up then the council collect it all in a normal bin lorry and take it to a depot to be picked over by hand on conveyor belts.