In the Northeast

[Gary S]

A restaurant (like the diner in this case) has a larger container behind the restaurant. That container will be picked up on a regular schedule. In many cases is the container hidden/surrounded by some kind of (wooden) fence. There is a lot of garbage beside the container within the fence because the restaurant people don't care or because the container is to small.
Is that correct?

That's what I see in Houston.

What does the garbage collector do? Pick up the container to empty it only or do they also manually pickup all the stuff within the fenced area?

I don't work at a restaurant, but we do have a dumpster... the contract says they only take stuff in the dumpster. So anything thrown on the outside won't be picked up. I imagine it is the same way for a restaurant. Basically the driver pulls up to the dumpster, lifts it up and over so it dumps into the truck, then sets it back down. Driver doesn't even get out of the truck.

Do you have different kind of garbage for recycling? e.g. glass, plastic. metal etc?

There is a little bit of that here and there, but for the most part, we are guilty of just throwing everything out. It is a definite shame. Metals and glass and plastic are still cheap - easier to buy new than to recycle. I figure one of these years, we will be mining the garbage dumps for all the recylable materials.