A Unified View of Production, Recycling and Natural Resource Conservation: The Production and Recycling Function

We stress the role of recycling as a transformation technology that might imply a fundamental change in the technological framework of the economy and, therefore, on the optimal decisions regarding consumption, production and resource extraction. We discuss and extend the concept of Production and Recycling Function, a generalization of the traditional production function, which is an instrument to integrate the transformation processes of production and recycling in a single unified framework. We present a dynamic model to illustrate the connections between recycling, production and natural resource management accounting for the fact that society might put some value on the conservation of the resources.