> some paper. For everything else, it's very expensive or just impossible to recycle, and those costs are rising because they are labor intensive. You have Pap

> some paper. For everything else, it's very expensive or just impossible to recycle, and those costs are rising because they are labor intensive. You have Paper and plastic are just processed trees and oil, in other words: fuel. Just really dirty, but nearly as valuable as coal per kg if you don’t have any environmental controls to worry about. Paris has the biggest incinerator in europe on its territory and probably puts most of its garbage and much of its “recycling” in there. Glass probably gets landfilled, but can be dumped in a less regulated landfill (mix with construction waste, don’t need to cap or collect leachate or methane). Hard to say if the separate collection streams pay off, but the sorting is a cost the government doesn’t pay for.