[throwaway75787]

I've had this idea for a while. A roving machine that slowly and autonomously eats through commingled landfills, like a giant industrial shredder on tires. Take in everything, refrigerators, catalytic converters, electronics, toys, couches, nylon clothing, diapers. Separate everything with some combination of magnets, eddy current metal detectors, centrifuges, machine vision and other means. The metals can surely be sorted in many ways, aluminium, steel, rare earths, the odd radioactive extracted, others melted down and separated. Glass and recyclable plastics cut to pellets. Everything not recyclable but with some chemical energy in it sent to a incinerator (with a high-efficiency electrostatic filter) for power generation. Things like cinder blocks would be left over. This would also reclaim land and eliminating huge eyesores.

[cmarschner]

That‘s pretty much what is done in countries with a recycling industry. It might be a bit more manual (you might have containers on the street for glass for example) but an entire industry is supposed to make it happen and burn the rest and turn it into electricity on the way. You can read up on their proceedings, e.g. at https://www.recycling-magazine.com/

The thing is: even after 40 years they‘re still not very good at it. Even the top countries just make the 50% mark. And that is done via a set of different political measures and education of the public https://www.nspackaging.com/analysis/best-recycling-countrie... .

[agumonkey]

In theory this would also influence/pressure material research to find solutions that are easier to recycle and not cheap/effective. Something that can last 1 year and be degraded easily in basic components to be reused (wink wink: nature).

[season2episode3]

Ever seen Wall-E?