Saw an interesting investigative piece some months ago about the state of recycling in Australia. Amongst other things, it aimed to answer the question of why only South Australia has a deposit-based recycle system.

It turns out that the plastic container making industry does not like recycling. It is simply cheaper and easier to always use virgin plastic. Processing recycled plastic is, the industry has decided, A Hard Task involving numerous levels of cleaning and reconstituting. Paying consumers to return it makes it *more* expensive. They'd much rather consumers pay to give it back... so we do. There have been cases of individuals who have campaigned for a nation-wide deposit-based recycling system who have been targetted by industry into withdrawing. Anything to keep fat-cat CEOs raking it in. (Contrast the metals industry who do pay bounty; the plastics people usually respond that recycling metal is far easier.)

Our local council used to have segregated recycling, too. Now they have co-mingled. It seemed like a backwards step. I suspect that they would lose less money having one collection for all recycling and then later sort it out under more-or-less controlled conditions than doing multiple pick-ups that consumers have pre-sorted.

Wade.