recycling is good?

Some people would think that recycling is a good practice for the planet and it should always be.

This is not always true.

Because when you put your waste into recycling bins, you only made step 1 of the recycling process. Somebody would come to collect your waste and send them to the central collection points for sorting-out and distribution to recyclers. Then the recyclers would re-process the waste into usable semi-finished / finshed products. These products would then be transferred back to the end-users (i.e. the consumers). Just think about the whole process you could imagine how much energy would be required to achieve all these.

It is not worth recycling certain things if the finished products would require more energy to produce than the same made from new materials. If the energy saving is negligible or even negative, one should consider to put the waste for passive "recycling", such as burning them to provide heat for electricity generation. In that way, it could still recover part of its inherent energy credits. Of course scientific analysis should be carried out to ensure no side effects would be induced.

This practice has been carried out by some responsible manufacturers in collaborations with in-house researchers or academics. It is time government officials to take initative to lead the research as well, as whoever gets more from these green researches, he/she would be the one that leads the world in the sustainable era.