Landfills are becoming large concentrations of materials like plastic, aluminum and other. What part of the process of mining landfills and processing the materials for new products, makes mining raw materials from the earth and processing them cheaper?

Question

Landfills are becoming large concentrations of materials like plastic, aluminum and other. What part of the process of mining landfills and processing the materials for new products, makes mining raw materials from the earth and processing them cheaper?

In: Economics

Answer 1

It’s cheaper to mine material and create new material than to go through garbage to recycle. Even the stuff in recycling rarely get recycled (about 1/3rd depending on where you live), it’s just too expensive and more and more countries refuse recycling because they get too much garbage mixed in it and it’s just not worth it.