Jeez .... i dunno .... there's got to be a better way of doing the metals recycling. Up until fairly recently ... we sent most of our trash off to the incinerator. The trash was burned to make electricity and the metals were sorted from the ash afterward. The incinerator plant must have been processing at least 200 tons of MSW a day.

The economy of scale and the industrial process is really the best way to go when dealing with low value recyclable items. You would never get anywhere doing one piece at a time by hand.