Comment by kube-system
3 hours ago
Most municipal recycling programs accept a lot of materials they do not currently recycle because retraining people is harder than sorting materials on their end, and not necessary since they sort it anyway.
After sorting they look for buyers of the raw materials. This varies depending on the market and quality of the material. Everything left over is sent to the landfill.
Do you have a source for this? I'd like to learn more and educate myself on this topic rather than stay ignorant
If you've got 20 minutes this has a good interview of someone who runs a municipal recycling program: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-shou...