Do I need to rinse recyclable items (cans, plastic bottles)?

No, it isn't, but it will prevent you from having roaches, ants, bees, or other animals. it will also not stink, or get sticky

You dont need to wash cans and bottles but it is a good idea to. Paper contaminated with food scraps cannot be recycled. So if you have a co-mingled recycling collection for plastics, glasss, steel, paper etc (thats collected all in the one truck) you may end up contaminating the paper. Truck loads of recycling that are too contaminated are simply dumped in landfill. Recycling is a labour intensive industry. People at material recovery facilities stand beside conveyor belts sorting the materials. It can be messy unpleasant work when the recycling is putrid. Washing your recycling with your dirty wash up water before pulling the plug on the sink does not use up any further resources and helps a little too ensure that your recycling is actually recycled.

yes

It helps keep the ants down if you got an ant problem thats about it..

heres what i do: after i have washed the evenings dishes (i only wash up once per day) i rinse out any recycling in the dirty dish water - easy! then, if you are using earth friendly detergent, put a basin under the u bend and drain the water from the sink into the u bend. - easy!

No you don't need to...if you recycle them in some places you need to remove caps When you rinse your bottles/cans out you're just washing out sugar and food so ants and bugs won't come to your bottles (I wash them too btw)

You don't need to rinse cans or bottles. It is a waste of water but it is also a courtesy for the people who are going to be handling the cans/bottles. something you can do is pre-crush the cans and remove the caps from the bottles.

no need to rinse them..

Yes, your recyclers should specify. Generally, as long as you pour as much of the liquid as you can out of the containers, you are fine. Rinsing is usually a waste.