Recyclables

Recyclables are the recovered materials produced by the Waste Sorting Plant when used items and scrap are processed through the recycling chain. They are the product that makes the recycling loop work: the higher the Recycling Efficiency, the more of the original material is returned as Recyclables and fed back into production.

Recycling Efficiency starts at 25% and can be increased to 90% through Edicts and Research. At 25% efficiency, every 100 Iron consumed yields 25 Iron recovered from Recyclables processed in the Waste Sorting Plant. As efficiency rises, the amount of material that can be reused grows sharply, making recycling one of the strongest long-term multipliers in the game’s resource economy.

• At 25% efficiency, 100 units of material act like 132 units over time.
• At 50%, they act like 196 units.
• At 60%, they act like 247 units.
• At 70%, they act like 328 units.
• At 75%, they act like 395 units.
• At 80%, they act like 494 units.
• At 90%, they act like 989 units.

This scaling also means that high-efficiency recycling can overwhelm storage and transport if the system is not prepared. At very high efficiency, recovered materials such as Gold may return faster than they are consumed, and limited storage in Recyclables Collection, internal buffers, or belts can create bottlenecks. During startup, over-smelting raw ore can clog the chain because recycled products loop back before space is available. Adding buffers or reducing initial smelting helps keep the flow stable.

Recyclables also have detailed scrap values for consumables and subcomponents, which are evaluated at 60% recycling efficiency in ver. 0.7.5. The listed values show that different inputs return different material mixes, so the composition of waste matters as much as the amount processed.