alt Hacker NewsSome resources are still scarce. And a lot of those 6E24 kg is iron and nickel we can never get to. Another big fraction is basically molten stone. And we really should stop putting more carbon into the atmosphere.
Also, if you go for measures like mass processed, the weight of microchips, pcbs, parts is only a tiny fraction of what has to be processed and build in the supply chain.
Agreed that it is smarter to use oil for plastics then to burn it directly.
> Agreed that it is smarter to use oil for plastics then to burn it directly.
My argument is that as long as we are still burning oil and gas, we might as well burn old plastic instead of new oil and gas.
If/when we stop burning oil and gas, then we can think more seriously about recycling plastic.