"With 'Single-Stream' Recycling, Convenience Comes At A Cost"

""This machine is like a large grocery store scanner," says Brent Batliner, manager at the St. Louis-area recycling division of Republic Services as he stands next to something called an optical sorter. "It's got infrared scanners that, as material passes underneath it, it will read the chemical makeup of the bottle."

This optical sorter is set to scan for HDPE, or the type of plastic labeled with the numeral 2. When a milk jug or detergent bottle reaches the scanner, a row of air jets sends it flying off the conveyor and into a storage bunker 25 feet below...

Collins adds that about a quarter of single-stream recycling goes to the dump. For glass, that loss can be as high as 40 percent.

Even so, in the constant tug of war between quality and convenience, convenience wins. But as single-stream processing continues to increase in popularity, the trade-off will be fewer recyclables recycled."
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