Where I live in France we don't have rubbish collected from our house, instead we have 3 types of bins that are buried in the ground in a convenient place, usually within 50m or so of your house (isolated properties, businesses in commercial areas and people who are happy to pay are common exceptions). This means we cut down on the emissions of the refuse collection vehicles (for want of a better, internationally recognisable word) because they spend a lot less time idling, waiting for bins to be loaded at every other house.
The three bins are for:
1. All plastics and metals
2. Cardboard/paper
3. 'General' refuse
Everything in bin 1 is
sorted at the recycling centre and recycled where appropriate*.
Everything in bin 2 is recycled in theory, although I wouldn't be surprised if some of it is incinerated.
Everything in bin 3 is mostly land-fill or incinerated if possible.
* As far as sorting goes I believe it works roughly like this:
a. Everything is shredded and then washed. During the washing process the plastic floats and is skimmed off.
b. The metal is sorted into ferrous/non-ferrous using magnets.
c. Plastics are ground down into smaller particles and then sorted, granule by granule, using
x-ray or infra-red sensing. Plastics that fail testing and/or aren't a recyclable resin type are incinerated.