This needs to be removed from the hands of the public and forced onto the recycling industry. These are solvable problems, and I would go so far to suggest they

This needs to be removed from the hands of the public and forced onto the recycling industry. These are solvable problems, and I would go so far to suggest they perhaps are not that difficult to solve. Recycling as a profit center is part of the issue. Some areas I've lived in have a single recycling bin for all recyclables, some force it on the households to separate paper from metals and plastics, and some have a bin for each. As the article mentions paper and cardboard can be mechanically separated from other materials, the reason some areas don't do this is not because they don't have the resources, it sometimes because different recyclers are paying the municipality (or whoever is in charge) for the material. So the sorting is then pushed on to the households to do. Aside from being too complicated, with too many overlapping rules, the sorting of packaging should be placed on the recycler who is in the business of recycling.