We have heard many claims from politician about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_economy

You can recycle the minerals and you should recycle minerals, but almost no recycling technology can recycle 100% of minerals and recycling has always costs attached to it (this can be for example capital costs, building recycling facilities, operating costs in form labor costs for separation, energy costs for melting material and purification processes).

For example aluminum is recycled, not because we have have a shortage of aluminium ore (Earth's mantle is 2.38% aluminium by mass), but because recycling is less energy intensive then production of fresh aluminum. https://international-aluminium.org/work-areas/recycling/

Recycling of EV batteries will lose between 1-10% of the valuable metals https://blog.ucs.org/jessica-dunn/how-are-ev-batteries-actua...

The worst kind of recycling is decreasing the costs of recycling by outsourcing to third world countries, by exploiting lax environmental regulations or corrupted environmental protection officials.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chittagong_Ship_Breaking_Yard

https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/10/05/g-s1-...