When your waste management company asks you to comingle your recycling, how is it separated?

Question

By hand (ick!)?

By machine (how would it decidwe whatr was what?)?

Anybody out there have any idea?

Answer 1

It depends on the system they have in place.

Some facilities have conveyor belts which move different materials into different bins.

Some use human labor to sort.

Waste Management has some great model systems in place you can check out on line.

Answer 2

Mostly it is by hand.. but it could be part by machine

Large magnets can be used to remove iron and steel

If you submerge it in water, some of it will float away

but then there is usually a hand sorting..

Answer 3

It is mostly by hand. Steel can be pulled out magnetically and, in some plants, puffs of air can be used to sort out some of the materials.

Answer 4

Where I live, they actually dump it all out on a warehouse floor and hand-sort it.  I was told so by an employee.

Answer 5

in truth, even when it was supposed to be separated, people got it mixed up.

that being the case, they might as well just do it themselves.

as everyone said, magnets get the iron and steel.

the remainder is probably put on belts and hand sorted.

there seem to be quite a lot of folks who just dump whatever in the recycle bin, ignoring the fact that they have to pay to haul all the stuff that cannot be recycled away.  it's really stupid, and counter productive.

the recycler PAYS our small town $1m a year.

they then recover that by the aluminum cans they get.

when people put other trash in, that eats into their profits, and the contract next year will go down.

have a good day y'all.