A lot has been said about recycling some forms of waste, but is it possible to recycle "all" of our waste?

Question

I know that certain forms of household and industrial waste can be recycled, paper, glass and aluminium for example.

Whilst I know that after a certain point recycling stops being an efficient use of resources. I was curious as to how far recycling could be taken as a technology.

For example, would it be more cost effective at some point in the future to mine rubbish dumps for the resources they contain as opposed to mining the raw matreials.

I'm not sure but I vaguely recollect something about "energy" used in recycling versus that used in refining and that at some point theres a trade-off between the two.

Answer 1

In Sweden, EVERYTHING is incinerated in small local incinerators and the resultant energy put back to the community. No landfill, minimal output - sounds good to me.

Answer 2

Most of the important points have been made, but I thought it might be good to remind ourselves that nature indeed recycles everything. As far as matter is concerned, Earth is practically a closed system. The changes we are making are nothing but shifts in the feedback cycles that make the planet the ultimate recycler. Some of these changes are large enough to threaten these cycles and greatly diminish the (short term) potential for life on this planet. And the short term recycling potential is what keeps us alive. The long term recycling potential (which we are probably not threatening) is what will allow the next ones to come after us to find our fossils and put them on displays as prime examples of the last mass extinction... let's hope it won't come to that.

Answer 3

I would say everything can be recycled, the problem is how to get it to the right places for the right treatment, waste or left over food and organic stuff can make gas and bio - fuels, old bits of wood can be reused in a lot of ways , what we need to do is to set up a system similar to Sweden so that it is easy for every one to put their little bits in the right places so they become useful, an incentive is needed and not as seems to be the norm these days, a fine for not doing as the politicians say and do not do.

Answer 4

No we can't recylcle all of our waste. But we can buy stuff like recycable dog bags and hemp dog beds or other cloths. Always buy biodegradable stuff and organic vegtables. I'm not the best at conserving energy and stuff like that because im addicted to my radio and mtv though. If everyone, say turned down their thermostat a couple of degrees in one nieghborhood, we would save a lot of energy.

Answer 5

Recycling anything is possible. But becomes expensive. So it is just thrown away. That is tried to be forgotten :-) But bad way to forget !!!