I would love to see corporations like Apple invest in recycling research. I think recycling will be a booming industry in the future especially recycling plastics, but also taking complex components and separating them into their core elemental parts.

I do not have an issue with products especially technology products being designed with a “short shelf” life… new technology usually makes them obsolete before they wear out. But like the writer I do not like the idea of simply dumping them.

The next generation of billionaires will include someone who has figured out how to make money recycling plastic, someone who can recycle CO2 back into carbon fuel at a massive scale using solar power to drive artificial photosynthesis or reverse combustion, and someone who can harness the energy of the homeless to collect and separate garbage. What?

This last point sounds cruel and strange. But who has not seen a homeless person pushing a shopping cart with bags of aluminum cans headed to the “recycling” center. In a way, the aluminum industry has harnessed this workforce to pick through garbage cans everywhere to extract the valuable aluminum in them. Why not expand their efforts to include plastics, paper, glass, and a host of other resources. It would increase their incomes from scavenging and it would contribute to the planet.