[fwip]

I believe that recycling aluminum takes significantly less energy than smelting it in the first place.

I don't have any idea about plastics/papers.

[sitharus]

Post-consumer paper can be recycled in to some forms of low-density card that doesn't require high quality pulp. Egg cartons come to mind, and as a percentage in some packaging, newsprint and sanitary papers. Post-consumer paper cannot easily be recycled in to anything resembling printer paper due to the contaminants. Pre-consumer paper is recycled heavily as it's of known quality.

I'm not aware of any plastics that are recycled in to the same form. I know that PET (1) and HDPE (2) are recycled in to fibres.

It's a similar story to glass, certainly where I live a large amount of glass is recycled in to crushed aggregate rather than new bottles. The energy costs of cleaning don't make it worthwhile.

[samatman]

Glass bottles used to be reused, which is the responsible thing to do.

Consumers didn’t like it because scratches accumulate on the outside of the bottles.

[ConceptJunkie]

I always thought it was a shame that we stopped doing that, but plastic has taken over pretty much for all the glass bottles that used to be recycled.

[JJMcJ]

Aluminum is the only part of recycle that is really profitable. That's way people picking through trash take the cans and nothing else.

[kd0amg]

Everyone I've seen do this takes bottles too, and it's because they can redeem the bottles and cans to collect a state-mandated deposit.