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And what’s with the plastic bags screwing up the recycling machinery? My dog has no trouble ripping a plastic bag to shreds. Is the recycling machinery made out of recycled paper?
If you’ve ever seen a paper shredder jammed with paper, or a whipper-snipper jammed with grass wrapped around the shaft, then you’ve got an idea of how multiple layers of many torn plastic bags could cause problems.
There’s also the issue of having recycling items within bags obscuring whether a bag might also contain non-recyclable items. Often the recycling processes your Council contracts can’t just pluck a suspect bag off the production line on its own, and so many of the recyclable items beside the bag get removed as well. These removed items are then often dumped as general waste; nobody is going to open the bags and hand-sort them – too time-consuming and costly. (Besides being an awful thing to have someone do.)
Not all Council recycling contracts are the same, and not all contractors’ recycling capabilities are the same. You really need to check what items can AND can not be recycled in your local area. Just because an item (such as a plastic bag) has a recycling symbol on it doesn’t mean it’s suitable for your recycling bin .