I think recycling is perfectly viable, but it will take effort. Either effort from everyone that throws away things (good luck with that), or a large dedicated staff to sort through trash and separate it appropriately and somehow make money on it.
This Wired article has some good information.
My county was and still is accepting paper, plastic, aluminum, and glass all in one container. I can see where food contamination and glass breaking (duh!) would cause problems. Plastics also have to be a big issue, there are many different types of plastic and some are recyclable and some are not.
I would have no problem separating the paper, plastic, aluminum, and glass if it would help.
Me too, seriously. But we are in a tiny minority. At this point the attitude of most people becomes “Fork this. I don’t get paid to separate garbage” and it all goes into the landfill bin.
There used to be bins in a church parking lot near me just for paper recycling. I figured it was great because it kept the paper from being contaminated and meant more of it actually got recycled. So I schlepped my recycling paper over there every week or two. But last year, the church decided to kick the recycling company out because they were paying next to nothing and the additional traffic from cars and from the truck that emptied the bins was tearing up their parking lot. I’m back to putting it in the single-stream recycling bin, knowing that most of it will never actually get recycled.
My community separates paper and cardboard; yard waste; plastic, aluminum, and glass; and trash. It’s surprisingly easy and I’m guessing it takes care of the two problems I keep hearing about with single-stream recycling: broken glass contaminating the paper and food waste contaminating the paper.
The municipality has a little side-business selling compost and mulch made from the yard waste, so I know that gets recycled. They accept basically any plastic for recycling except for plastic bags, polystyrene foam, and cellophane wrap. I don’t know how they separate the plastic into recyclable vs. non-recyclable materials but I understand they burn the non-recyclable plastic in a waste-to-energy plant, along with other combustible waste. I assume that if they can’t sell even their relatively clean paper, they just divert that scrap to the power plant too. I have no idea what they do with the glass if there’s no commercial market for it.