Replying to myself here. I followed up on footnote 31. Paper here: "TOWARD ESTIMATING DISPLACED PRIMARY PRODUCTION FROM RECYCLING: A CASE STUDY OF U.S. ALUMINU

Replying to myself here. I followed up on footnote 31. Paper here: "TOWARD ESTIMATING DISPLACED PRIMARY PRODUCTION FROM RECYCLING: A CASE STUDY OF U.S. ALUMINUM" http://econ.ucsb.edu/~startz/Aluminum.pdf http://econ.ucsb.edu/~startz/Aluminum.pdf Absolutely fascinating, and not surprisingly leads down the path to the law of unintended consequences: "At this point, it would be natural to wonder, “If secondary production doesn’t fully displace primary production, where does the ‘extra’ material go?” ... The common assumption that recycled material displaces primary material of the same type is depicted in the left-most circles in Figure 4. However, two other outcomes are possible that result in partial displacement. ... First, as discussed in the introduction, secondary aluminum may displace production of materials other than primary aluminum. Recycled aluminum may, for instance, displace primary or secondary steel, copper, magnesium, or plastic." "Second, increased aluminum recycling can also affect overall aluminum demand. For instance, it is possible that increased recycling can lower prices of both primary and secondary material, and thus increase demand for aluminum (similar to the energy efficiency ‘rebound effect’). Note that this market increase is independent of any exogenous growth that may occur simply as a result of global economic forces. Production and consumption data show that both aluminum recycling rates and the size of the aluminum market have been growing rapidly for the last 100 years; it is possible that some of this increase is a result of decreased material prices from increased recycling." They conclude: "While the environmental benefits of reuse and recycling come entirely from their potential to displace more impactful primary production processes, alarmingly little is known about actual rates of displacement. ... While this case study is just a first step towards a better understanding of displacement, it does suggest that we are currently systematically overestimating the environmental benefits of reuse and recycling. ... That the current environmental benefits are lower than we think they are does not mean we should stop recycling. Instead, it tells us that recycling currently does not fulfil its environmental potential, and recycling efforts should therefore focus on maximizing displacement rather than simply maximizing collection, reprocessing, and market development for secondary resources."