....to suspect that domestic recycling is either pointless or a lot less hassle than my OH believes.

[WalkingOnTheCracks]

"RInse out the coke can before you put it in the recycling! And the milk bottle! They can't recycle it if it has food residue on it!"

"Really?"

"No! It has to be clean when you recycle it."

"But..."

...but the recycling lorry that comes to us on a Tuesday also picks up from - what? - five hundred other houses? Are you saying that if a single one of them puts an unrinsed yoghurt pot in there, the whole lorry load has to be condemned? And if it's not quite that sensitive to Fruits of the Forest LoFat Dessert, how sensitive is it? How many unwashed tuna cans does it take to balls-up a whole truckload?

Surely the first thing they do with all that glass and plastic is wash it? I mean, there must be a washing process somewhere in the chain.

But if there isn't, then there's no point us being so conscientious about recycling - because it's absolutely certain that, every fortnight, someone in one of those five hundred houses will have lobbed in a half-empty tin of beans that's been in the back of the fridge for a fortnight....

"....but, that can't be right. Either that, or the whole thing's a con."

"Just rinse them out, alright?"

I rinse out my recycling and encourage my other half to do the same…. Not sure why as I’m not convinced about how much actually IS recycled but it stops the bins getting dirty and smelly (I don’t line the recycling bin) and reduces flies inside and out!

I'd like am answer to that too OP. I also want to know why we have to recycle at home, which I 100% agree with but when I'm in the office with over 100 colleagues in the city, we have no recycling facilities at all and everything goes in landfill whatever it is. It doesn't make sense

An answer even

I give a token rinse to some things e.g. yoghurt pots, bean tins, sauce jars, etc. Other items would go straight in the recycling bin e.g. fizzy juice bottle, water bottles

I rinse everything out properly before I put it in the recycling bin. I don’t have any control over what happens after it gets picked up but at least I’ve done what I can.

Along with trying to buy less packaged stuff in the first place.

I visited a recycling facility once, and they sorted the recycling using a combination of machines / magnets and hand sorting on a conveyor belt. They really did seem to do everything that they could to recycle as much of what was there as possible.

I think of recycling as being the least that we can do; it's not the answer to the climate crisis, but of course we should do what we can. If only companies and governments were doing what they could do, huh.

Coke cans are going to be melted back to liquid aluminium at a heat of over 500 degrees C, so I'm pretty sure the odd bit of residue will be neither here nor there, as long as you haven't left in enough to spill out and drench all the paper and cardboard.

I squeeze soiled trays and jars to be recycled into spare corners of the dishwasher - mostly to stop the recycling bin being full of maggots.

I aim for the standard of my most oblivious friend who is a Cambridge graduate (was delighted when her council finally provided a wheelie bin and started filling it with black bags.. Took a lot of convincing that as it was green it was for garden waste and she needed to pay for collection, despite I presume a fairly full on local campaign introducing the new scheme) or of a typical student house. I share your scepticism and tried to convince my family that the supermarket soft plastic recycling was probably just being piled up in a field somewhere so I didn't need to keep carting it up there - annoyingly having looked into it they seem to be aiming for a brilliant circular scheme of turning the soft plastic into bin liners that they will sell in store. So the collecting continues and does at least save space in the wheelie bin.

Have you checked your local councils website for this information? My local council explains exactly what and why the collections are sorted at the kerbside instead of at the facility. It also tells us where the recycling is sent to.

Same here in Canada. We pay for water and washing out mayonnaise and peanut butter jars uses a lot of hot water and soap!

I usually rinse out food tins but I don’t bother with mill bottles cans etc.

At the moment there is a massive drought so I’m certainly not wasting water on washing rubbish.

Our local council posted on their Facebook to please please rinse out recycling because they had yet another lorry load of recycling refused at the centre or wherever it goes due to too much of it being contaminated. Basically if everyone had the lazy arse attitude of not bothering to rinse it then the whole lot ends up in landfill.

alot of our recycling from the uk gets shipped to developing nations (eg Indonesia, Philippines) to be “processed” and recycled there. Except they mostly dump it in landfill, so we just end up polluting poorer countries.

No need for hot water and soap. Fill jar with water, screw lid on. A few hours later, shake jar and tip out. Jar is clean, no hot water or soap needed.

I rinse out containers to prevent the bin smelling, but the minute our council introduces compulsory water meters this will stop.

arkbound.com/something-not-to-ship-the-uks-recycling-overseas/

The way recycling is processed in the uk is appalling and I have no time for people who shriek about unrinsed tin cans being so uninformed!

Correct. It all gets sorted I to clean and dirty, so truckloads aren't condemned.

But isn't that exactly OP's question - how much is too much? If there's a tolerance for it being a bit contaminated then what's the upper limit?

There was a very long and involved argument on my local FB group about this recently. One of the local councillors posted about going for a walk on rubbish day and seeing unsuitable things in the clear plastic recycling sacks and that that would mean the whole sack is thrown away not recycled. People questioned this, pointing out that the sacks are ripped open as the stuff is put in the lorry and so if it's true that one tetrapak gets the whole lot condemned does that mean that actually nothing from our small town is ever getting recycled, since clearly this will happen in every single lorry-load? There were over 100 comments but no one, including the councillor, seemed to actually know the answer...

Just shove the yoghurt pots and jars in the dishwasher (if you have one) along with the rest of your washing up. No need to rinse separately.

bonus - lots of the plastic stuff will shrink in the wash meaning more room in the bin.

Recycling has been mostly a nonsense for the last however many years.
Recently they have started "recycling" bottles into bottles.

The pollution caused overseas by our 'civilised' recycling being sent away has been horrendous.