How much of what I put in the recycling bin is actually being recycled?

I know that in my area if it's recyclable and it's in the bin, it gets recycled.

That stuff about plastic rings around the bottles and things not being clean enough is mostly false. The people at the recycling plant that sort that stuff out are too busy picking out the garbage and hazardous waste (such as weed killer, bug spray, and cleaning agents that aren't empty) to worry about nitpicky things like that. As for paper, the process is pretty much totally automated by weight, no one pays any attention to if there's a window on your envelope or not!

If your recycling program is single-stream like mine (you can just put everything in one bin) then they probably have a similar operation. I would tour your local center to check it out- it's most likely free, a quick email to the company is all that I needed to get in.

You can get statistics from your own company by sending them an email, but in Rochester 99.9% of what goes in that is recyclable goes out.

Only what they can make money out of at the time. If the price of aluminum happens to be low, it gets tossed. The prices for most of the plastics are too low for a profit and the price for newsprint has been dropping steadily. If they have the storage facilities, they may store the recyclables in hopes that the prices may go up but at some point it'll cost them too much to store them. Currently, most recyclers depend on the collection service subscription for an income.

It varies by region, but in CA I would say of the items that go into the recycle bin it would be at least 90%. The big problem is people not putting into the bin or not learning what their area will accept.

Well I've watched a couple of documentaries and read a couple of articles that suggest that most of the stuff we put in the recycle bins actually ends up going to landfill anyway, because of tins/plastic being dirty, or those tiny plastic rings you get on the top of the bottle not being removed first, etc. I think if you follow what your local council is asking of you (ie. no green or brown glass in the glass bin etc) then most of the stuff you put out will be recycled.

all of it except plastic. Actually not much of plastic is recycle, about 20% of it