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What happens is to recycle a pound of printed paper (newsprint, home computer paper, etc) requires X joules of energy to process (so 1 lb paper = X joules of energy). Due to economy of scale, the current state of the industry is that that recycling paper (1 = X) operates at a cost deficit, or it costs more money for 1 = X than it does to produce an entirely new fresh batch of paper (Y = 1). This is quite simply, due to the efficiency of the recycling input (all the shit they take for recycling) vs the efficiency of producing new paper.
To put it even more simply, there is always an energy cost involved in recycling (an energy deficit) which cannot be avoided.
This is, however, a short term understanding of a problem (loss leader problem). Which can be over come with long term investiture. Ultimately, eventually, the amount of material recycled will reach a balance point where the input energy to produce new material will be greater than that of the recycled material.
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[–] Grospoliner ago
Okay. It's called economy of scale.
What happens is to recycle a pound of printed paper (newsprint, home computer paper, etc) requires X joules of energy to process (so 1 lb paper = X joules of energy). Due to economy of scale, the current state of the industry is that that recycling paper (1 = X) operates at a cost deficit, or it costs more money for 1 = X than it does to produce an entirely new fresh batch of paper (Y = 1). This is quite simply, due to the efficiency of the recycling input (all the shit they take for recycling) vs the efficiency of producing new paper.
To put it even more simply, there is always an energy cost involved in recycling (an energy deficit) which cannot be avoided.
This is, however, a short term understanding of a problem (loss leader problem). Which can be over come with long term investiture. Ultimately, eventually, the amount of material recycled will reach a balance point where the input energy to produce new material will be greater than that of the recycled material.