Some resources are still scarce. And a lot of those 6E24 kg is iron and nickel we can never get to. Another big fraction is basically molten stone. And we really should stop putting more carbon into the atmosphere.

Also, if you go for measures like mass processed, the weight of microchips, pcbs, parts is only a tiny fraction of what has to be processed and build in the supply chain.

Agreed that it is smarter to use oil for plastics then to burn it directly.

> Agreed that it is smarter to use oil for plastics then to burn it directly.

My argument is that as long as we are still burning oil and gas, we might as well burn old plastic instead of new oil and gas.

If/when we stop burning oil and gas, then we can think more seriously about recycling plastic.

Did you ever try to burn plastic?

1) Plastic is not liquid, so you can't pipe it to a gas or oil power plant. You may argue that coal isn't liquid either, but continue reading...

2) Burning plastic generates toxic fumes.

3) Plastic ash is sticky and very difficult to clean.

You might like to read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to-energy_plant

It's a fascinating topic. There's even more problems than the ones you bring up, but engineers are also pretty smart.