It's a complete speculation, because I can't cite this, but isn't Earth not capable of sustaining 7+ billion people? Exponential population growth brings even greater exponential rise of greenhouse effect, oil consumption, deforestation, etc. IMHO it is the main problem of overpopulation.
That's an Malthusianism[0] right here. Why recycling and increased efficiency themselves aren't a solution? Because people will increase their consumption to offset all the gains.
C.f.:
"Why are even some affluent parts of the world running out of fresh water? Because if they weren’t, they’d keep watering their lawns until they were."
If there is a problem, it's water. On the plus side, water is the easiest to recycle by far, the only limit we're close to hitting in some locations is the amount of water that's recycled for free by the weather.
Also, we have skyscrapers. The 11m2 area per person is ground-level area. If you have 10-storey skyscrapers on average, 120m2 for every family on average should be easy, and allow for population to increase 5 fold without exceeding available space in Austria.
Of course this illustration is a simplification but it brings the world population back to perspective.