Recycling in Amsterdam

Recycling in Amsterdam is very different from how I’m used to it from Prague. It depends on where in the city you are, but for me:

• Plastic: throw it in the regular trash, no need to clean, just put them in individually. They have a machine that separates it out: seive to split out large/small, take out foils with air extractors, take out metal with magnets and electricity, scan leftover plastic with infrared and separate based on that. See video (in Dutch)
• Paper: you can leave tape/paperclips/staples. They take those out (method isn’t explained). Paper goes in a large “washing machine”, gets dissolved, and new paper is made out of it. See video (in Dutch)
• Glass: no need to clean, can leave lids on. They sort the glass by color, metal and other things are taken out (method isn’t explained). Then it’s melted and processed into new glass. See video (in Dutch)

Plastic for me was the biggest surprise. I’m not sure if this is the better way to do it, but it’s better than when people sort it themselves, because then all sorts of stuff ends up in the recycling containers. Which means that the processors need to have some cleaning step anyway. So in the end, more probably gets recycled this way, because people don’t have to do anything specific & the machines can consistently recycle a certain amount.