[mistrial9]

I have experience in commercial recycling and was about to post something with dim details, but this comment says what I was about to say roughly. It is hard to read comments from people with good intentions but zero experience in commercial recycling. Single-stream versus household sort is one of the most basic choices of any municipal recycling program. Every operation has waste, flaws and mistakes, single stream or not.

Excellent human sorting as you find in Japan or Switzerland is rare. Of course it is desirable. Pre-sorted inputs are not perfect in those jurisdictions, and rare in most other places.

The comment above lauds the technology here and I agree. Sorting a recycling line is a terrible kind of job for the majority of adults, and economics make the implementation worse in many cases. De-facto, it is the handicapped, children, prisoners and starving people that sort trash in most of the world. 1st world machinery with the right economics are an improvement in almost all cases, especially where food waste might be involved.

[jamal-kumar]

I'm wondering what happens to the woman who collects bottles in my neighborhood for her son's wheelchair when this technology comes to the third world.

That said the local garbage dump is encroaching on a refugee settlement, if it was something that could help it encroach less on that maybe it's a good thing.

Lots of factors here.