Does Recycling Actually Save Resources?

Of course.

Some critics claim that using less of one source only means that you use more of another. This is actually true, but critics will use this fact to state that recycling then does nothing. They believe that the resources saved by recycling are used anyway throughout the recycling process. While this is somewhat correct, that assertion is not well-founded because it does not look at the situation closely enough. Recycling uses resources to drive trucks and operate machinery, but these resources are nothing compared to the amount needed to extract virgin materials and create new materials.

Some resources will have to be used to recycle- there is no getting around that. To declare that recycling is useless for this reason, though, is absurd. Recycling not only uses far less natural resources than using brand new materials, it also prevents reusable, valuable materials from just sitting in a landfill somewhere.