I don't know what it's like nowadays, but I was living in Germany around 2008-2010 and they had a great recycling program. You bought these clear yellow recycling bags that were sold at any store and put anything recyclable in it. No sorting required. Put it out with trash and they'd sort it all at the recycling center.

Every week I'd have 2-3 recycling bags and maybe one trash bag every other week. So much was recyclable, I almost didn't have any real trash.

Then I moved back to the US and my local recycling service only collected type 1, 2, and 7 plastics. And aluminum cans. Paper/cardboard had to be manually dropped off at the nearest recycling center, batteries needed to go to a separate plant for processing. And if anything had touched food, if was ineligible for recycling.

Heck my current US recycling service only comes every other week. I have twice as much recycling as trash each week! My trash can is mostly empty every week, while my recycling is always overflowing. But they recycle so few products, they've decided it's not worth hiring a team to collect every week. So annoying...