Here's the cafe, and you can just make out three bins in the photo - green, yellow and red
Here's a close up of the red one, sponsored by Walls
and here's the yellow one, courtesy of Lipton
Also within throwing distance is this big bin
and these two bins - dog poo and, is it finally the recycling bin?
Nope, a general litter bin
It may be that all rubbish collected on Tooting Common is sorted for recycling, or maybe a clause in the cafe's lease requires the managers to extract recyclable items within a 100m radius of the cafe (in either case why not say 'waste and recycling bins').
Or maybe none of the plastic bottles, aluminium cans etc. are recycled from here at all. Maybe the litter dropped on the ground is sorted for recycling, which is why people drop it near all these bins.
Who knows? Who cares?
UPDATE
I emailed the Parks contractor for Wandsworth (Enable Leisure and Culture) yesterday and had a prompt reply:
So if you care about recycling and see a can or a bottle thrown on the ground or in a bin, please pick it up to take home to put in your domestic recycling.
When the last trials took place people used the recycling bins for general waste and we were unable to recycle any and all went as general waste. If the café have there own bins it is their responsibility to dispose of the waste arising from them.
There is no allowance in the Parks Maintenance contract to recycle litter waste but we do ask our contractor to do this where ever possible which is not that often because of the sorting costs involved.
When Friends Of Tooting Common conduct their litter collections they do segregate recycling and take this off of the common.