Going entirely on memory, so I may have misrepresented a bit or been out of order. I seem to remember there's an initial automated sort and wash before shredding to remove dead mice, contamination from single stream recycling, assorted junk thrown in the wrong bin and so on. Then after shredding there's washing and rinsing stages, and a steam and abrasive stage to remove glue and labels etc. It left me quite astonished how incredibly involved it is when I looked into it.

Hand sorting? This really is fundamentally broken isn't it?