7 Things You Didn’t Know About Plastic (and Recycling)

If we bury metals, we can just mine more aluminium, tin, or iron — we’re not close to running out of any of these. But recycling metals is a good idea, as it’s cheaper and much more environmentally friendly than mining.

The durability of concrete structures varies widely: while it is impossible to offer an average longevity figure, many will deteriorate badly after just two or three decades while others will do well for 60–100 years. This means that during the 21st century we will face unprecedented burdens of concrete deterioration, renewal, and removal (with, ob

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Analysing the total life-cycle cost of recycling vs making new items is very complicated and depends on the specific context.

By contrast, reusable metal straws and canvas bags require something like 10-100x the energy and materials to manufacture, and need regular cleaning so they don’t spread diseases. So unless you use them many times, they end up being worse for the environment.