ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the premise that there are three faces of recycling. One face involves the direct benefits and costs of recycling itself. Second, recycling is referred as a symbolic metaphor. Recycling, with all its many indirect implications, can be employed as a window into the modern society, a very special window that gives the viewer a magical form of X-ray vision. By viewing the economic system through this window of recycling, the underlying skeletal form of the economy can be observed, much as the bone structure of the human body becomes apparent through a real X-ray machine. Third, is the underside of recycling, which deals with actions that are undertaken and substances introduced that may have irreversible consequences, even with the most assiduous efforts to recycle. A necessary prerequisite for approaching sustainability is that economic production and the accompanying use of materials are marked in some way by complete life-cycle cost accounting.
