> "We can keep making things, then remaking them into different things basically forever."
Woah, since when?
For one thing, making things (and remaking them) takes a tremendous amount of energy, which uses fuel, of which as of yet we are still running on finite reserves (disregarding the environmental angle completely, even).
Secondly, when you chop down a tree and make it into paper, that paper may be recyclable, but never in the exact same form (there's a reason recycled paper is not used in many applications of paper). Not only that, many items that we make are not practically recyclable, or dangerously so - see: recovery of precious metals from electronics. Nigh impossibility unless you want to burn the rest of it away, spewing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and causing skyrocketing cancer rates.
Until we have infinite, free energy and the ability to transmute matter at will, we cannot keep remaking things forever, not even close. No amount of recycling will even come close to the environmental and resource savings of simply not making something in the first place.
We have plenty of fuel in the form of nuclear power. Just because we aren't using it today doesn't mean we can't.
I never mentioned the word recycle. I don't expect anyone to recycle paper. Instead you compost or burn the paper, and grow a new tree. The elements that make up paper are infinity reusable.
The same for the precious elements in electronics. True, we do a poor job of recovering them today, but we could change that easily, and keep making and destroying electronics forever without running out.
We don't even need to recover them, we have plenty in mines. We could store the electronics in a big hole in the ground (for example in an old mine) and only use them much later when we need to. The only reason we do try to recover them is for money, not because we are going to run out.
By far the majority of the stuff we build is made of just a few elements: silicon (in concrete), carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen (those four make up plastics, wood, and lots more) and iron. We are not going to ever run out of those - the planet is made of them.
We could keep making and destroying things forever without running out. All we need is energy. (There is no need to transmute elements.)
Woah, since when?
For one thing, making things (and remaking them) takes a tremendous amount of energy, which uses fuel, of which as of yet we are still running on finite reserves (disregarding the environmental angle completely, even).
Secondly, when you chop down a tree and make it into paper, that paper may be recyclable, but never in the exact same form (there's a reason recycled paper is not used in many applications of paper). Not only that, many items that we make are not practically recyclable, or dangerously so - see: recovery of precious metals from electronics. Nigh impossibility unless you want to burn the rest of it away, spewing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and causing skyrocketing cancer rates.
Until we have infinite, free energy and the ability to transmute matter at will, we cannot keep remaking things forever, not even close. No amount of recycling will even come close to the environmental and resource savings of simply not making something in the first place.