the idea that recycling will save capitalism doesn’t hold water. First, most of our material use cannot be recycled. Forty-four per cent of it is food and energy inputs, which become irreversibly degraded as we use them.33 Twenty-seven per cent is net addition to stocks of buildings and infrastructure. Another big chunk is waste from mining.34 In the end, only a small fraction of our total material use has circular potential. Even if we recycled all of it, economic growth would keep driving total resource use up.
