The problem with packaging

THE CONVEYOR BELT whizzes past, carrying waste that residents have put in their recycling bins. Moving almost as fast, a handful of pickers remove items that shouldn't be there (a negative pick) or collect ones that should (a positive pick). Cardboard packaging, aluminium cans and plastic bottles all fly by and will be recycled. But so too do keyboards, baking trays, dustpans, and an awful lot of flexible packaging - sweet wrappers, bread bags and the like - all of which are ‘contaminants’.