Dematerialization fails — backlash and unsustainable recycling measures

Some prominent economists have criticized the idea that higher efficiency and substitution of consumption away from the most harmful categories are sufficient to ensure sustainable development.Footnote36 For one thing, there is an absence of institutional frameworks (e.g., legislation, regulations, taxation, and subsidies) for changing the quality of growth. In addition, private enterprises as well as many politicians have been strong opponents of the introduction of such institutional arrangements. More fundamentally, even if institutional frameworks were eventually established, serious doubt may be raised against the possibility of making continuing economic growth environmentally sustainable. In its physical dimension, the economy is an open subsystem of the earth system, which is finite, non-growing, and materially closed (except for the influx of solar energy and occasional solid particles, like meteorites). As the economic subsystem grows, it incorporates an ever greater proportion of the total ecosystem into itself and must reach a limit.Footnote37 Institutional arrangements that may change the quality of growth are thus only able to postpone the collision between ecological limits and economic growth. They cannot enable humanity to trespass such limits. One of the most important elements in dematerialization is recycling, which means that the same resources are used again and again—and again. With ever-increasing product volumes the recycling rate must increase. In practice, this implies that the products tying up resources must be taken out of use with a shorter interval each time. However, recycling is not environmentally neutral. It consumes energy and material resources, and even more so if the circulation rate is increased.Footnote38 Moreover, many materials begin to fail after a couple of recycling cycles and have to be put to different uses.