Recyclage

Recycling is a pretty great thing. I need to see a segment on CBS Sunday Morning (man do I miss that!) that explains the whole process. All I really know is what follows:

1) I buy food and domestic products and when they’re used up, I rinse out the containers and put them in the big green bin.
2) Bo brings them out to the curb on Monday nights.
3) Starting at about 5:00 am (or maybe sooner, but I am just sleeping more heavily,) a series of people walk up and down the street picking through the recycling bins, presumably searching for consignment bottles.
4) At around 7:30 am the big trucks come slowly down the street, the sounds of their heavy-duty motors and brakes are joined by the clanking of breaking glass as the bins are emptied into the trucks. The bins are tossed back to the curb.
5) At around 9:00 am the truck comes back to do the other side of the street after having woven its way through the web of one-way avenues.
6) For the next hour or so, these sounds become more and more faint as the truck travels further and further.
7) At some point we retrieve our bins from the curb and put them back in their rightful places, where they wait ready for the next cereal box or juice bottle.
8) I’m missing from step 8 to approximately 100, I think. I could presume that the trucks go to a “facility” where the items are sorted and smashed and crunched and melted and heated etc.
101) As I shop I notice packaging made from recycled materials…and I buy them.
102) See #1…that’s why it’s called re-“cycle”

I’d be interested in filling in some of the gaps. I don’t need to know every single little detail. Like I said, a segment on a morning show where for example a cute little green Heineken bottle is followed from its birth through the consumption of its precious contents to the green bin to the truck, and then the rest! That would be interesting.

Maybe if I knew more about the process, I’d know the answers to some of my questions like…
--How small is too small when recycling a piece of aluminum foil, does it eventually become cost prohibitive? Same question for bottle caps, both metal and plastic.
--Which is better for the environment…paper or plastic bags at the grocery store? I should add that Montreal supermarkets are ahead of the game in selling affordable, functional, and dare I say fashionable reusable shopping bags for $1 each. My problem is that I can’t seem to remember to bring them with me to the grocery store, partially because I often use them for other purposes. We do reuse a lot of the plastic bags from the grocery store for garbage bags, but many tear just from the contents of the groceries so that they are no longer easily reusable.

Ahh, so many things to learn! It isn't easy trying to be green!