The usage later on may be more or less tolerant of what people actually put in the bins.
Here, a lot of people throw food waste in plastic bags in the bins, which works about as well as you think. There are people who spend Monday to Friday fishing around around in the compost by hand, fishing out and emptying the bags. More thoughtful people throw food waste in compostable bags in the bins, but those bags aren't quite compostable enough (the city composts for six weeks, those bags need twelve at the very least) so those bags, too, have to be fished out by hand.
It works. I imagine the cost could be lower and those poor people could be employed in less soul-crushing work.
Where I live, the guidance is actually that plastic bags are ok (yes, non-biodegradable ones). Given that there is bound to be a certain amount of contamination, including things that are harder to break down than the process allows, I would imagine that mechanical separation is accepted as a required part of the process.
Yes. I'm curious though — do you happen to know the end result of the process?
The compost makes earth, which can be used for something. Mechanical separation leaves bits of torn plastic bags, whose number is a function of the amount of plastic in the input and the effiency of the separation. What "something" have they found that tolerates so much plastic that they don't have to push down on the plastic in the input?
I have a green bin in my kitchen with an airfilter that I line with old newspapers or paperbags from bread or veggies and just dump food scraps directly into that and then into my apartments foodscrap bin. You need to wash the bin out occasionally but works pretty well without needing plastic liners.
