How is the recyclable garbage sorted?

[Stephen Tashiro]

My city has recently started to collect recyclable garbage. We put paper, steel cans, aluminum cans, plastic bottles all in the same container. How is this stuff sorted out? How much of that work is done by human hands?

[Dave Lehnert]

A short video on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz-K2oaX1_Q&feature=related

[Zach England]

I was once told that here prisoners sort it. I can't verify that.

[Dan Hintz]

That video is vastly different than the operations I've seen. I saw a belt that was flying... electromagnets plucked steel and such from the line, followed by a serious shredding machine. Blowers separated light plastics/paper from the heavier non-magnetic metals (aluminum, etc.) and rubbers. Water floats (among other things) were used to separate rubber from metal, can't remember offhand what they used for separation of plastic from paper.

[David Weaver]

I saw stuff like dan says. Workers moved the materials around after they were sorted, and at the entry point, there were workers who removed plastic bags from all of the materials.

Otherwise, magnets, scales, optics and air seemed to do all (or almost all) of the work.

Even at that, it's very expensive for municipalities to recycle, no matter how many cans and metal scrap they get.

[David Helm]

In my location (we've had curbside recycling for 30 years) it's done by hand. Can you say "JOBS"?