Comment by devops_monkey

Not really. The bigger problem at the moment is that the market for recycled materials has effectively disappeared. No one is buying these commodities right now. Chinese government owned businesses spent a lot of money buying US paper and plastic mills then shut them down so they could bring those industries to mainland China. Then they discovered that it wasn't as good a business as they hoped. Now they have stopped buying our recycled materials so prices have dropped. Some commodities prices have even gone negative, meaning recycling facilities are paying to have materials removed from the warehouse. So even if sorting was free, most materials are either sitting in warehouses or simply going into the landfill. source: I work in the industry.