I’m assuming recycling (like most industrial processes), comes with its own carbon footprint / pollution overhead / energy consumption / etc., so why is it better to process these materials instead of letting them turn back into dirt in a landfill?
In: Technology
Because they are valuable. That means that people will pay for them, and you can use that money to recycle other, less profitable materials. If you waste the paper by letting it biodegrade, you have to plant more acres of trees to fill the demand for paper.
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