As mined materials start to get more scarce, their prices will rise, and mining companies will have increased power over markets. You can see recycling as a kind of "intertemporal power smoothing", depriving mining companies of future economic power by reducing the rate at which materials are mined. Economic concentration of power imposes tremendous externalities, most of which are felt by ordinary people in the form of price increases and political disenfranchisement due to lobbying and outright corruption.

I am willing to pay an energy premium today in order to avoid that human rights premium in the future. You may not be so willing, but I would urge you to consider that position.