Things that are easy to recycle, like metal cans, plastic, and glass bottles, are indeed collected by less well-off people for money, sometimes in a competitive fashion. Some people even steal segments of working electric cables and sell them for scrap, because of high profit margins. So there are areas where recycling is commercially viable and prosperous.

These areas are few, though. Most of the time the cost of separating valuable materials from each other in a trashed item far exceeds the value of the materials recovered.

Responses of this form -- if X were worthwhile, X would already be happening; as X is not happening, it cannot be worthwhile -- are often proposed when talking about the economy. Is this not presuming the answer?

It reminds me of Leibniz's idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds [1], except the omniscience & efficiency of the market stand in for God.

If the way in which we hope the economy picks good outcomes involves people thinking of things that might be worth doing, trying them and then succeeding if they were right, we surely must allow that not all of the good ideas have already been had, and so we do not yet live in the best (most economic?) of all possible worlds?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds

> if X were worthwhile, X would already be happening; as X is not happening, it cannot be worthwhile

You misquote me. I make no such value judgment.

My original argument: If recycling were more efficient, it would be privately profitable, and a competitive recycling market would develop.

If we as a society believe recycling to be worthwhile, we should work to increase the efficiency of recycling to >5% to cover the costs associated with recycling. Alternatively we could continue to subsidize the logistical costs of recycling as we do now.

First, it is important to note that they are not criticizing material recycling as only capturing 5% of the value, but rather, the economy, i.e. linear vs circular.

I think you are missing the point that an historical, linear, consumptive model leaves behind 95% of the value.

A circular model seeks to capture as much of that value as possible, ideally 100%.

"The current economy is surprisingly wasteful in its model of value creation. In Europe, material recycling and waste-based energy recovery captures only 5 percent of the original raw material value.[2]"

"[2] This material value retention ratio is defined as the estimated material and energy output of the European waste management and recycling sector, divided by the output of the raw material sector (adjusted for net primary resource imports and 30 percent embedded resource value in net imported products)."

One key point of their analysis is that it includes waste management where material may be buried in a landfill. This highlights the inefficiency of the linear economy. Private companies are paid a fee to bury value.

The global recycling industry for materials is extremely competitive. Private companies are fighting tooth and nail for our gold.

Water bottles are a great, obvious example of extremely profitable recycling. Water bottles can be recycled easily and turned in to more water bottles, t-shirts, car parts, and on and on.

A less obvious, more complicated example is used carpeting. For decades, old discarded carpet has accumulated in landfills. In the linear, consumptive model, landfills were paid to bury the material and its value. It has become such a problem that governments[1] as well as industry trade organization[2] have pledged to tackle the problem. It's complicated because it is multiple materials that can't simply be ground up and remelted. A significant percentage of carpet is nylon, which is very valuable. Today, used carpet is turned in to resin[3], which ultimately becomes furniture, car parts and other useful products.

[1] http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/Carpet/Program.htm [2] https://carpetrecovery.org/ [3] http://www.econyl.com/

I noticed this in another response, "My original argument: If recycling were more efficient, it would be privately profitable, and a competitive recycling market would develop."

Recycling is very efficient and becoming more so. Incredibly profitable private enterprises that are solely recycling companies operate in a competitive global market.

The circular economy is the next evolution of these markets.