This article studies the exploitation of recyclable exhaustible resources such as metals that are crucial for the energy transition or phosphorus that is crucial for agricultural production. We use a standard Hotelling model of resource exploitation that includes a primary sector and a recycling sector. We show that, when the primary sector is competitive, the price of the recyclable resource increases through time. We then show a new reason why the price of an exhaustible resource may decrease: when the primary sector is monopolistic, the primary producer has incentives to delay its production activities in order to delay recycling. As a consequence, the price path of the recyclable resource may be U-shaped. Numerical simulations show that the date of exhaustion of the virgin resource is further away in time for high and low levels of recoverability than for intermediate levels.
