question: How do they clean dirty plastic / glasses etc. before recycling?
comment: I think just melting them down into a molten glass burns off anything that would be on them
passages: Other uses for recycled glass include:
  
  BULLET::::- Fiberglass insulation products
  
  BULLET::::- Ceramic production
  
  BULLET::::- As a flux in brick manufacture
  
  BULLET::::- Astroturf
  
  BULLET::::- Agriculture and landscape applications, such as top dressing, root zone material or golf bunker sand
  
  BULLET::::- Recycled glass countertops
  
  BULLET::::- As water filtration media
  
  BULLET::::- Abrasives
  
  Mixed waste streams may be collected from materials recovery facilities or mechanical biological treatment systems. Some facilities can sort mixed waste streams into different colours using electro-optical sorting units.
  
  Section::::By country.
  
  Section::::By country.:Germany.
   Curbside recycled glass from homes and businesses is the largest source of post consumer recycled glass (California recycled 79% of its glass bottles in 2008), but salvage glass is an emerging new source. Many more state and municipal governments have begun to mandate the separation and recycling of the glass pulled from demolished buildings. Some companies are now processing locally sourced glass into aggregate to more closely meet the LEED, USGBC specifications.
   One of the solutions for using all the unrecycled glass was to “turn trash to treasures” and make drinking glasses, ashtrays, lampshades and earrings out of the empty bottles.
  
  After a few weeks of research, volunteer Isa set up the glass upcycling workshop on Gili T using locally available tools and a local worker, Zul, was trained to create products out of discarded bottles.
   Manpower or machinery can be used in different stages of purification. Since they melt at higher temperatures than glass, separation of inorganics, the removal of heat resistant glass and lead glass is critical. In the modern recycling facilities, dryer systems and optical sorting machines are used. The input material should be sized and cleaned for the highest efficiency in automatic sorting. More than one free fall or conveyor belt sorter can be used, depending on the requirements of the process. Different colors can be sorted by optical sorting machines.
  
  Section::::Recycling into glass containers.
   Finally, glass is sorted according to its color: brown, amber, green, or clear. It may either be sorted by hand, or via an automated machine that uses colored filters to detect different colors. Glass fragments smaller than across cannot be sorted automatically, and are mixed together as "glass fines".
   Apartment dwellers usually use shared containers that may be collected by the city or by private recycling companies which can have their own recycling rules. In some cases, glass is specifically separated into its own container because broken glass is a hazard to the people who later manually sort the co-mingled recyclables. Sorted recyclables are later sold to companies to be used in the manufacture of new products.
   Section::::Recycling into other products.
   Recycling by material
  
  Recycling can be carried out on various materials
  
  Section::::Glass.
   Recycled glass countertops
  
  Recycled glass countertops are composed of 100% recycled glass (post consumer and pre-consumer) in a cement or petroleum based binder. A finished recycled glass countertop often ranges from 70 to 85 percent in recycled content.
  
  Section::::Environmental concerns.
  
  The glass used in recycled glass countertops is sourced from both post-consumer and pre-consumer sources. Post-consumer recycled glass sources are numerous, but the most common sources are curbside recycling and salvaged glass from demolished buildings.
   Several recycled glass countertop manufacturers have committed to providing green jobs to the low-income neighborhoods surrounding their manufacturing facilities. Some, but not all of the manufacturers use facilities that are solar powered and/or day-lit by south facing skylights. These manufacturers will also incorporate some degree of water recycling in their polishing process.
  
  Section::::Cement vs. petroleum binders.
   Glass collection points, known as Bottle Banks are very common near shopping centres, at civic amenity sites and in local neighborhoods in the United Kingdom. Bottle Banks commonly stand beside collection points for other recyclable waste like paper, metals and plastics. Local, municipal waste collectors usually have one central point for all types of waste in which large glass containers are located. There are now over 50,000 bottle banks in the United Kingdom, and 752,000 tons of glass are now recycled annually.
   Section::::Processing of external cullet.
  
  To be able to use external cullet in production, any contaminants should be removed as much as possible. Typical contaminations are:
  
  BULLET::::- Organics: Paper, plastics, caps, rings, PVB foils for flat glass
  
  BULLET::::- Inorganics: Stones, ceramics, porcelains
  
  BULLET::::- Metals: Ferrous and non-ferrous metals
  
  BULLET::::- Heat resistant and lead glass
   BULLET::::- Sale of all post industrial material (returned bottles, cans and plastic), cardboard, pallets and metal drums to recycling companies.
  
  BULLET::::- Use of shredding machines both in Barbados, which shred returned plastic (PET) bottles (post consumption). The shredded plastic is packed in sacks and exported to international recycling companies. The PET flakes are used by these companies to make various things like carpeting, wall insulation, and polyester T-shirts.
   PET reclaimers shred plastic bottles into flakes and then wash them, before reselling them as flakes or pellets to be used for new soda bottles, polyester fiber pr packaging. For bottle-to-bottle recycling, the bottles have to be decontaminated which was achieved by introducing "super-clean recycling processes," which in the US was done for the first time in 1991. These processes clean "recycled PET flakes to contamination levels similar to virgin PET pellets," so that they can be reused as beverage containers.
   The resulting surplus of green glass from imported bottles may be exported to producing countries, or used locally in the growing diversity of secondary end uses for recycled glass. , Cory Environmental were shipping glass cullet from the UK to Portugal.
  
  Section::::By country.:United States of America.
   Section::::Historic methods of glass cleaning.
   Section::::Current management system.:Recovery and reuse.:Recycling.:Paper and cardboard.
  
  Paper and cardboard materials can also be reprocessed in diverse ways and examples of end products might be recycled office paper and card boxes. These processes are 55% done locally and China represents the primary importer.
  
  Section::::Current management system.:Recovery and reuse.:Recycling.:Glass.
  
  Roads, sands and glass bottles are all possible end products of glass recycling. As for the previous categories, glass can be processed in different ways. Differently from them, plant facilities are all on Australian soil. O-I Asia is the major company involved.
  
  Section::::Current management system.:Recovery and reuse.:Recycling.:Metal.
   A "clean MRF" accepts recyclable materials that have already been separated at the source from municipal solid waste generated by either residential or commercial sources. There are a variety of clean MRFs. The most common are single stream where all recyclable material is mixed, or dual stream MRFs, where source-separated recyclables are delivered in a mixed container stream (typically glass, ferrous metal, aluminum and other non-ferrous metals, PET [No.1] and HDPE [No.2] plastics) and a mixed paper stream including corrugated cardboard boxes, newspapers, magazines, office paper and junk mail. Material is sorted to specifications, then baled, shredded, crushed, compacted, or otherwise prepared for shipment to market.
   Sims Metal Management also recycles post-consumer materials through a 20-year recycling contract with the New York City Department of Sanitation, which became effective in January 2009. Under this contract, the company is responsible for all curb-side recycling material, including all plastic, glass and metal on behalf of the City of New York. Packer trucks owned and operated by New York City deliver recyclables as a 26 commingled product to the company's facilities. The commingled product then is processed using a series of screens, magnets, eddy currents, optical sorters and conveyors. The recyclables are separated and sorted into ferrous and non-ferrous metals, different plastic resins, glass and residue. Then the recycled materials are shipped to US and non-US markets.
   Section::::Materials collected.
  
  The different types of recyclable materials collected include:
  
  BULLET::::- All types of paper/paperboard (excluding plastics, metal fragments and organic contamination)
  
  BULLET::::- Glass jars and bottles - by common collection points
  
  BULLET::::- Compostable materials
  
  BULLET::::- Plastics - Type 1 and 2 PETE
  
  BULLET::::- Motor oil
  
  BULLET::::- Tires - some re-treaded, some mixed with asphalt for road resurfacing
  
  BULLET::::- Metal cans - beverage and soup cans, although usually extracted from trash by separation techniques
  
  BULLET::::- Beer bottles through deposit systems
  
  BULLET::::- Plastic soda containers through deposit systems
  
  BULLET::::- Ink cartridge
  
  BULLET::::- All types of batteries
   BULLET::::- Photographic glass plates that are cracked or have binder damage are stored on sink-mats. Those with minor flaking are still housed in the four-flap enclosure that is labeled appropriately describing the damage. Glass plates with extensive flaking are stored on sink-mats horizontally and placed in a storage box with a label that reads “Caution: Broken glass. Carry Horizontally.”
  
  BULLET::::- Broken glass plate shards are often “sandwiched” in between two pieces of buffered board and then placed inside the four-flap enclosure.
   Computers that are termed "trashware" in North America or "totally reconditioned hardware" in the UK and Ireland are computer equipment that has assembled from old hardware, using cleaned and checked parts from different computers, for use by disadvantaged people to bridge the digital divide. Trashware is different from retrocomputing, which has only cultural and recreational purposes.
  
  Section::::Electronic waste.:Ink jet printer cartridges.
   Batteries and copper are sorted out first for quality control purposes. The materials are then compacted. Next, iron and steel (ferrous metals) are extracted using electromagnets. They are collected and made ready for sale. Then metals are separated from non-metals using eddy currents. Eddy currents are created by rapidly alternating magnetic fields, which induce metals to jump away from non-metals. Then water separation is used to sort plastics and glass from circuit boards and copper wires. Circuit boards and copper content is then sold. Plastics and glass are further compacted for reuse.
  
  Section::::Recycling By Region.
   After the sorting of materials is finished, the Zabbaleen sell the sorted materials, such as paper, tin, rags, plastic materials, cloth, etc. The Zabbaleen sell these sorted materials to factories that then reuse these products, such as paper, in the creation of new material. According to Engi Wassef, the director of the documentary film, "Marina of the Zabbaleen", PT plastic, which is the plastic used to make plastic bottles for water and other beverages, is one of the most highly sought out materials. In the case of PT plastic, the Zabbaleen would even export this material to China. However, the simple re-sale of sorted materials is not the only activity that the Zabbaleen do in terms of re-using these materials. They also create new materials from the materials that they have sorted. For example, granulators are used to change regular opaque-colored plastic into small plastic pellets. From these plastic pellets, a variety of plastic product can then be made, including garbage bags and plastic hangers. Handmade crafts are also made from rags and paper. Thus, the Zabbaleen system is a multi-tier system that is not limited to the simple collection of waste but also encompasses the creation of new materials from found recyclables.
   In North West England, all the glass collected for recycling is used within the UK, around half of the plastics and cans are used in the UK; the rest is sent further afield to continental Europe or China to be made into new products, and paper and cardboard collected is sent to local paper mills to be reprocessed into newspapers, tissues and paper towels, cardboard and office paper. Once again, some of the paper will be sent further afield.
  
presuppositions: Plastic and glass are cleaned before recycling.
corrections: Plastic and glass are not cleaned before recycling, and anything on them is burned off when melted.
raw_presuppositions: Plastic and glass are cleaned before recycling. Dirty plastic and glass gets cleaned before recycling.
raw_corrections: Plastic and glass are not cleaned before recycling, and anything on them is burned off when melted. Plastic and glass gets melted during the recycling process, which burns off anything unclean on them.