In Michigan, we have a 10¢ deposit on cans and bottles. They’re refunded by feeding empties into a machine that counts them up. But there are never enough machines, so a line forms. And right now I’m watching 7 dopes inspect each container individually before feeding it into the machine.
Here in Sweden we have that too, and we just got new machines in many of the bigger stores which sorts for you. You open the lid and there’s an angled wheel with indents which pulls up the bottles and cans you pour in from your bags, and they end up on a conveyor belt for scanning and sorting. While not magically fast, it really does help when people have a ton of bottles and cans
My mom lives in a small town in Norrland that has a single grocery store with only one machine. The machine is almost always broken! I haven’t seen the new machines you’re describing, but I hope her town gets one soon.
I live in the US in a state without a deposit system, so I put all my recyclables into one bag and walk it down the hall to my building’s recycling chute. No need for sorting because it all gets sorted at the recycling facility.