Joy to the world!...  

There have been times of refu...
There have been times of refurbishment and re-use...its called poverty and depressions and no one will do it by choice.
I want consumption and design to be appropriate, high tech for things that need it (transport, healthcare, communication) and low tech for things that don't, furniture, clothing and housing. I don't need a house with clever photovoltaics, a fridge connected to the internet (!) or a shirt that turns green on thursdays or some nonsense like that.
Thats my wish!

Amen HP
Hi tech and low tech certainly have their bounderies!
Think about perament space exploration, or even long term. Apply that to our own little space ship...Earth. To me, it begins to make sense that a near perfect cycle from birth, use and ultimately discarded and recycled anew, or even into a new form is possible and needed. A fimiliar example is Herman Miller who is surging forth with this concept.
We do have and currently use this technology for many products. There are still many advances need. Yes, raw materials are needed to recycle but even that is changing with advances in energy production.
I hope I'm clarifying what I'm getting at...This is a heavy topic for a posting. Just consider the amount of raw materials we use for everything...now the by products of use is enormous! What happens to all the materials that were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina? All that wood...plastics..so forth. I'm sure much of it is in and going to landfills. Apply that globally...its compelling!

It is
amazing the amount of material in use around the world. A trip to the dump, to an auto wrecking yard or a recycling center -- or a department store -- will reinforce the impression.
But perhaps this is proof that there's little shortage of material ? Perhaps the real problem is with energy production and use ? Isn't this the single "dirtiest" and most wasteful of man's enterprises -- considering (as Koen has pointed out) there are better things to do with our carbon-based fuel supplies than to burn them for fuel ?
Certainly there is still no need to fear the exhaustion of wood -- arguably the single most useful material man has ever employed ?

Don't get me wrong I love the...
Don't get me wrong I love the idea of recycling, but I think it applies best to basic things like glass and paper, re-using industrial waste is difficult, what if the primary product isn't manufactured anymore? Or its altered so that your componenet is no longer available? Supply chain snapped! How do you guarantee continuity?

I would not worry too much...
...about the lack of materials to recycle. I agree that it should be part of our environmental considerations. The other day a styrene re-cycle plant in Ontario Canada closed down because of lack styrene to be re-cycled. Of course the direct result is that the available styrene is not recycled anymore.
As in most human activity, there are few problems with single solutions. In a sustainable way of life, we should both restrain from useless consumtion,...and buy high quality, durable products of "timeless" beauty,...and use materials from sustainable sources,...and use carefully those materials that are not,...and recycle as much as possible, and reduce energy consumption,...and develop renewable sources of energy,...and grow as much wood we can, both as a carbon dioxyde trap and as an excellent construction material,...etc. etc.
Non of these solutions can solve the problem on it's own and all should be combined in a new set of ethics.
This being said, I think the last thing we should do is to create the illusion that we have reached the end of our technological possibilities and that we have to put the breaks on human ingenuity. Imagine what wind farms would look like without sophisticated glass/kevlar or carbon fiber re-enforced resin blades...
There are no general solutions, so, let's not promote them, but look closely at every need and after asking ourselfes "why" do I need this, let's answer the "how" with the full creativity, wisdom and knowledge, human intelligence is capable of....and a happy new year to you to!

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I was reading the otherday about how innefficient it can be to recycle, shipping glass to a recyclcing plant is the big one, it uses so much energy to get it there that apparantly its greener to landfill it.
windfarms....so many people hate them but I think they're beautiful, if they need resins and kevlar so be it, I don't think domestic consumables need these materials though.