I’ve been using all three ways and I like the last one best, where people don’t sort anything at all. Every load of trash goes onto a huge conveyer belt at the dump station, going round and round like luggage at the airport.
There are guys and gals stationed around this, each picking off whatever their speciality is, glass, cans, computer parts, plastic bags, yard waste.
When done this way, about 70% of the mass is diverted from the dump into usable “waste streams”. That seems perfect to me.
I thought it was perfect, but then moved to a city who’s eco team scorned that.
Said if the public isn’t involved in the process of sorting, then they never realize where all the waste is coming from, so the total never goes down. They prefer an enlightened populace that has to work for eco rather than get it handed to them silently. Ok, more perfect.
And of course there’s that middle ground of putting all recyclables into a single bin, rather than fully sorting. Which seems perfect.
Your first scenario of legions of sorters plucking out their specialty material is certainly best for the people who put out the trash - it’s mindlessly easy as every scrap of stuff goes into the bin. Best for the environment as well as so much gets gleaned out of the waste stream. Bad for whoever’s paying for it as it’s hugely labor-intensive.
The middle ground where people put their recyclables into one bin - still good for consumers and the environment. Decent for the city as they’re not pawing through every scrap of garbage and instead are just sorting cans, bottles and paper.
The scenario where the consumer sorts everything is terrible for the consumer (all that effort to sort stuff) great for the city (minimal labor) but bad on the environment. Make recycling too odious, and people just won’t do it.
Recycling at all on the consumer level is generally a waste of money and therefore, results in a net waste of resources. To my (casual) knowledge, no residential recycling program anywhere (in the US) has ever turned a profit. Consumer-level trash is only about 4% of the total of all trash generated, the rest is business/industrial and much of that second group is already being sorted as it is generated and recycled already.
~
This is from a few years ago in a waste management class. The ‘best’ way is for the hauler to do the recycling, not only do thwy get a greater %'age. but only have one pickup (trash) as opposed to multiple (trash and paper and plastic and glass), which save fuel. The sorters are usually people with some disabilities who really need a job they can do. Many places, mainly cities, make you sort your recyclables for 2 reasons, the one they state is so you realize what you are throwing out, the real reason (IMHO) is a make work project and a reason to take more of your money in taxes.
If you really want to find out what waste really is move to a rural area w/o garbage pickup, you will learn how to buy things that produce the least waste.
Actually, it came about because it was cheaper that the all-recyclables-together method. Before the conveyor belt they had people in parking lots near the dump doing things by walking around from a central pile and dropping things into different dumpsters. That made the trash stay put and the people move, which was quite labor intensive. And also exhausting. Nobody could work a full day at it.
Then, once they had the conveyor for the recyclables, they realized they had the capacity to just put it all through the process.
The savings come from reducing the final pile from half to 30% of the original.
The tending of the final trash heap is quite a big deal. Lots of expensive machines (with expensive machine operators) to plow the stuff around acres and flatten it out and pack it down. And every couple of feed depth they add a layer of dirt or rocks to stabilize the rotting pile and keep the vermin down.