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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

I assume that trash sorter would be on the sorting company's site?

Because from what I understand, the whole idea of having individuals sort their trash is stupid, and done either beacuse of cargo-culting environmentalism, or just to make people feel like they're making some difference.

Centralized trash sorting seems like a much more efficient solution (due to the usual reasons centralized solutions are much more efficient than distributed ones). In fact, many times I've seen the segragated bins on streets being dumped into one pile on a single trash truck. Besides it being more efficient this way, it's also safer - you generally can't trust regular people not to screw up such a task, so some centralized sorting before processing is required anyway.

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If humans sort their own trash by hand it's inefficient but the labor is "free" (opportunity cost, sure, but nobody's paying wages for the time expended). If humans sort at a central location it's far more expensive for the waste handling organization, even if professional full time sorters are far more efficient, because professional sorters need to be paid and need to be compensated if they're injured on the job.

If segregated bins are ultimately dumped into one big mixed waste stream, it's stupid cargo culting to have people separate things. But that's not how I have seen it work in the cities I have lived in. Some centralized checking/sorting before processing is still required even if people are supposed to separate their own, but much less than if you just give people one giant bin to hold everything they want to get rid of.

If you had a centralized waste sorting machine that could separate as well as human labor, but was much cheaper, that would be even better. (Though it wouldn't completely remove the need for household level separation: some perfectly recyclable clean paper becomes un-recyclable if people indiscriminately mingle it with food scraps or other dirty things before collection.)

> Centralized trash sorting seems like a much more efficient solution

How is this supposed to work? Sorting trash into many containers takes me a little more time and effort and pretty much exactly as much energy as putting it all in one place. It also keeps the materials from mixing (that is, becoming dirty). How would it help to first mix it all, compress it together (which is pretty much required to keep transport efficient) and then sort it again?

Even if you want to use a sorting machine, would it not be better to have presorted ("richer", in mining lingo) input material streams?

You want centralized sorting anyway, because a waste processor:

a) can't trust that you'll do your sorting perfectly, and won't occasionally throw e.g. glass into metals bin out of hurry, carelessness, spite, or while drunk. And even if you are perfect, your neighbour isn't.

b) might want to change the segregation rules to better optimize recycling process; you don't want to force an entire city to update their bins and/or habits in lockstep with whatever the waste processor does.

Point a) means they have to sort themselves anyway, at which point individuals doing the sorting is just wasted effort.

I suppose there is no point in trying to find rich ore deposits either? After all, the ore has to be refined anyway.

Sure, the processor will want to seperate, say, aluminum from iron, and remove any glass from either stream, but I am fairly sure that these tasks become significantly easier if the stream does not also include diapers, orange peels and wet cardboard

> I am fairly sure that these tasks become significantly easier if the stream does not also include diapers, orange peels and wet cardboard

My point is, they can't even trust the stream won't include those. General population can't be trusted like that.

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