Earliest examples of recycling

Although they may feel like modern concepts, both recycling and elements of a "circular economy" have a long durée. Humans have been re-using, repairing and modifying tools and artefacts almost as long as we have been around. Whether these activities can precisely be defined as "recycling" effectively depends on your starting definition. Studies of flint tools recovered from Tabun Cave (dating c. 400,000-500,000 years old) in modern-day Israel suggest that humans in the Lower Paleolithic period (2.5 million-200,000 years ago) re-used the flint from old hand axes for the creation of new tools. Others consider the Bronze Age (3000-1200 BCE) as the dawn of modern recycling, where waste is completely broken down and becomes the raw material of new objects. Because bronze is completely recyclable, it is actually quite hard to calculate how much of ancient bronze artefacts are made from recycled material, although it is clear that many Bronze Age peoples had the smelting technologies to do so, evidenced by furnace pits and ingots of metal created for ease of storage, trade and transportation.

Later examples include examples of broken ceramics that were not discarded but rather modified and used as tools an estimated 3,000 years ago, as discovered by Polish archaeologists working in modern-day Dubai. The Saruq Al Hadid desert site, where the artefacts were found, was a centre of human habitation from the Umm Al Nar period (2600-2000 BCE) through to the Iron Age.

Meanwhile, in the famous Roman city of Pompeii, which was buried under volcano ash in 79 CE, archaeologists from the University of Cincinnati excavated mounds of refuse outside the city walls. They then analysed deposits from the city, discovering that material from these early recycling stations had been incorporated into buildings such as earth floors. Lead archaeologist Allison Emmerson said: “We found that part of the city was made out of trash”.