Does our recycling REALLY get recycled???

[ellehcim]

I'm a bit of a recycling freak and spend ages every week washing out bottles plastic and tins. However our local council provides recycling bags which require everything to go in together (and there's no point separating them because it all goes into one lorry). Is recycling a very labour intensive operation i.e. a bunch of guys picking up every single plastic tray, checking the number on the bottom to see what sort of plastic it is and sorting it OR does it all get dumped anyway?

Will be really disappointed if the rumours I'm hearing about it all being shipped to China and Africa and dumped there are true

I think it depends on your council. Why not ask them? Sadly, I think lots of rumours about it going to Asia are true - but be heartened by the fact it does get sorted there.

Well that's not so bad then. I thought it got shipped there and then dumped in landfill. Happier now.

Sorting it out provides a job for some of the poorest people.

I'm muddled about this too. Our council used to sort as it collected (men chucking things into different bits of a funny lorry); now it all gets smashed up together in a great big truck. There's been quite a bit about this in our local paper, and the council actually run trips to the places where it all gets separated (greenwich, for us (we're N London)).
So that sort of sounds good. HOWEVER I've also heard that the kind of separation they do in places like that is incredibly energy intensive, and produces very low quality stuff. Same local paper had an opinion piece from one of the councillors about just what a waste, carbon-wise, this kind of mashing together and then half-separating is. He said, and I have no real way of judging whether this is true, that if you really want to recycle, you need to take the stuff along to separated bins yourself...
(Apparently the mashed up stuff first gets an electrostatic boom over it (to get up the plastics), then a magnet (steel cans), then a huge blower (paper), then I can't remember how they separate aluminium and glass. but everything has glass fragments all over it, the plastic is all mixed, and it's v carbon-intensive to do this kind of thing.
this is long enough i could go on...

Hmmm. Its so confusing.

DH has a client who is in this business and says it doesn't get sorted once its out of the country - just dumped.

We stopped recycling paper at work when we discovered that the council was so inundated with recycled paper that they were paying a company to take it away and burn it. Though that was a couple of years ago....

ellehcim-I often wonder this myself...our recycling all gets lumped in together in one bin too. Was getting suspicious it was all ending up in a hole somewhere!

that's interesting littlefrog-so having to sort it all actually wastes a lot of energy.

hmm. I actualy wouldn't mind sorting it myself and putting it in different bins etc if the council provided them...I guess they think most people wouldn't bother though...making it easier for people to recycle by not having to sort it themselves must presumably encourage higher levels of recycling I would think.

We're not allowed to put glass, cardboard, envelopes or tetrapaks into our recyclingg rubbish, so presumably that makes it easier to sort. I hope so!

They used to pick up the glass in a separate collection, but stopped doing that (without telling us ) - but did increase the number of local glass bottle banks.

You will have an MRF. Materials Recovery Facility.

It all goes in the same bin and gets sorted by hand on conveyors. Except glass - that is not allowed to be sorted by hand. If there is any contamination in a glass bin (ie other rubbish or the wrong colour glass) then this might end up with it having to be dumped or used at a lower grade. Just make sure you always separate your glass correctly.

Any plastic can be chipped and used in many ways. Don't beleive the hype surrounding what type of plastic it is - it can all be used for somthing.

Whack it all in and let the experts decide what to do with it. As long as we are doing our part by returning as much as we can - that's the important part.

re Glass bottles - I used to try and remove the bits round the top that the plastic/metal lid was sealed to - does this matter? I have to say i don't bother now because no-one else seems to.

btw they say you shouldn't use fresh water to wash out your recycling because even cold water uses energy (to pump it to your house). Just wash everything in old dishwashing water.

our council collect paper, glass and tins. The glass can't be broken or have lids and they don't tale lids from tin cans either. All except paper go into one bin and that all gets dumped in a lorry every fortnight(if they come at all).

People are always telling me that recycled stuff is just dumped but even if it is, I think it's a good idea to recycle. It should get us into the routine of recycling being the norm and make us more aware of the mountain of waste that we create.

EricL - are you saying that we should put in all kinds of plastic even if the council/bins SPECIFICALLY say not to? Could you explain why?

Janinlondon - interesting that you stopped because the paper was being burned. As I understand it, incineration (with heat recovery) is one of the most efficient ways of 'recycling' the energy from many kinds of rubbish. Certainly better than landfill!