It gets wheeled out to the curb when full and/or once a week and trashmen dump it all in their truck and they sort it out at their facility.
Garbage and non-recyclables go in a trashbag and are picked up and disposed of separately. Two trash pickups a week are now down to one and could be every two weeks. Trash company makes money from the recyclables and that keeps the rates down.
It works.
We have a similar system here where I live. We don’t have to separate anything - we just throw all recyclables into a 50gal wheeled bin that is provided to each house in addition to the wheeled trash container. The recyclables are sorted by hand when the pick up trucks get to the waste facility. It provides unskilled jobs and more than pays for itself. The fact that it is such a simple system means that compliance is very high. It’s a win / win. The more simple the system, the better the results.
Privatizing the CA system would fix it all. Gov’t attempting to make a share of the profits has a way of screwing everything up.
How much do you pay? What does your local government pay? I smell a rat. Recycling is rarely profitable and usually requires coercion or subsidies or extra fees/taxes.