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Comment by declan_roberts | Hacker News Reader

You don’t need to put metals in the recycling (at least not ferrous ones) because they pick those out of the trash anyway.

They just charge you extra to feel good about it.

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> You don’t need to put metals in the recycling (at least not ferrous ones) because they pick those out of the trash anyway.

I've never seen that done at any of the various landfills I've been to. I wonder if perhaps some do that I'm not aware of, or if I misunderstood your meaning.

Some towns have thankfully realised that charging per-bin is silly and doesn't reflect their expenses well, so they now charge per-pickup, per-volume or per-weight, with recycling bins being generally much cheaper than mixed waste bins or even free.

Why do you think so?

Probably because its easy to do with a magnet so someone must be doing it already

Aluminum is not magnetic

Eddy Current Separators

https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/magnetic-equipment-gu...

> (at least not ferrous ones)

I don’t think it is easy. Most of the other garbage will just tag along when you lift the metals. It would be different if the garbage was burned. Then you could just get the metals out of the ashes. But to have a clean incineration, the temperature will be high enough to evaporate some metals too.

Maybe if you ground all garbage to a powder it could work too. But that is another step that costs time and energy.

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