So, we have two metals of equal value and yet, for entirely logical economics reasons, we recycle pretty much all of one that we use and pretty much none of the other.
It is, rather, that we should recycle those things that we do not reuse.
The standard environmentalist mantra is not actually that we should recycle everything.
"All the money we put out, we expect to get repaid, so that we can recycle and use it again, " chief executive Nick O'Donohue told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme.
"We need to either recycle it or have it composted because otherwise we're just filling landfill sites, " Ruth Bond, from the National Federation of Women's Institutes told the BBC.
In a sense the problem is the same as deciding which quality of ore to mine in the first place: we now need to either find richer sources to recycle from or arrange how we use these materials in the first place to facilitate recycling.
FORBES: Recycling Scrap Rare Metals Vital to Future Technologies
The problem comes when we try to insist that people recycle things which are not valuable: food scraps say, or garden cuttings.
FORBES: New York City: Where the Streets Are Paved With Gold
He had someone, a young intern high school student working there, make up signs with arrows that said 'recycle stale old ideas here, ' and we taped them to the recycling cans.
Certainly everyone wants to recycle waste, and protect the environment, but we are limited by the lack of a viable systematic approach.
FORBES: Could a closed-loop system be the solution to reducing waste?
应用推荐