Recovery is not restoration. Material arrives at its next use with altered properties, an attached history and a different regulatory classification.
What the circle diagram hides
Arrows in circular-economy material usually run from product to recovery and back to product, and in that picture the material loses nothing. Plastic that has passed through an actual recovery process has a lower molecular weight, carries contaminants and additives, and has a colour that can no longer be chosen. What comes back is not the material that left.
Decide the next use last and recovery stays a cost
If volume is increased first and an outlet is sought afterwards, inventory accumulates. Fix the next use first — required properties, permitted colour, regulatory classification, identified buyer — and the specification of the recovery process is derived backwards from that demand. How far to sort, and where to stop, becomes answerable, and that stopping point is the break-even of the unit economics.
Provenance is a condition of sale, not an administrative burden
The first question a buyer of recycled feedstock asks is not about purity but about origin: which product it came from, by what route it moved, and who confirmed what. Without that record the material cannot be cited in a regulatory filing even when its properties are adequate. In a recovery business the ledger is not overhead; it is what makes the material sellable.
Where to start in practice
For any material you recover or plan to recover, write three lines before anything else: the next use it will enter, the minimum properties that use requires, and the minimum record that use requires. If those three lines cannot be filled, what exists is a collection plan rather than a recovery plan.