> Anyway, some plastic/bottles have aluminum caps, and those I might leave on vs. tossing in the bin detached. I figure it wouldn't matter, aluminum is recycl

> Anyway, some plastic/bottles have aluminum caps, and those I might leave on vs. tossing in the bin detached. I figure it wouldn't matter, aluminum is recyclable too. Yes, aluminum is recyclable, but not when attached to a plastic bottle. How do you expect that your 'attached' cap is going to become detached from the bottle so it can be recycled with the rest of the aluminum, and the plastic bottle recycled with the rest of the plastics? For plants that use separator machinery, the machines can't unscrew caps from bottles. For plants that use humans, it means the human has to unscrew the cap before it is separated. That's why the pamphlets say separate the caps from the bottles. The bottle and the cap end up in two different streams, and if they are separated at the outset, it is easier to split them up into the two separate streams at the sorting plant.