hi again - boiledegg, I'm pretty sure that councils aren't storing recycling to later dump it in landfill, because a) they've got nowhere to store it, and b) the landfill people won't let loads in without it being weighed and paid for, as opposed to the council getting paid when it's weighed then delivered to a sorting facility.
Do you mean all your recyclables are collected together and mixed up? That's pretty common, because there's now lots of Material Reclamation Facilities (MRFs) where recycling is automatically separated, and not having to get householders to do it usually means they put out more recycling and complain less. They should have told you if they've gone from a system where your stuff needed to be separate (used to get more money for separates, but now we have more MRFs and don't need to export recyclate it makes less difference), but I can well believe the council didn't...
There are schemes where people put recyclate in a 'survival bag' and it gets collected into the same truck as wheeliebin waste and crushed, and separated later, but I think they've discontinued them because people refused to believe the recycling was recycled. Could be some left in the UK.
Last year was the first since the 1970s for the amount of household waste generated to go down (had been rising at 3% a year in the late 90s!) Sadly I suspect this is more to do with recession than less packaging and waste.
abetadad's maths sounds right - google SELCHP for info on how it's finally working in Dartford.