Factorio Forums

I was thinking about a way of re purposing things like barrels. Maybe if I had a bunch of empty barrels I could throw them into a furnace and make it into a steel plate. But make it expensive like 10 barrels to 1 plate or you could make it less so it is not an easy way to get rid of barrels. Maybe do the same with plastic bars!
How about fish (Or for more fun do something and make the fish into an Easter egg!)

Make the math almost like the Kovarex enrichment math. Basically "You're an idiot for making too many barrels! If you recycle them, now you'll have too many of <insert item here> to deal with!

Just a thought

barrels, steel furnaces and iron chests are about the only mass produced thing that you cannot recycle actually IIRC.

Wooden items can be burnt in a furnace/boiler as fuel.

Steel chests can be turned into logistics chests.

Fish can be eaten to recover health.

For the rest of the intermediate items you can easily design your factory to back up and stop production if there is an excess.

viewtopic.php?f=80&t=21278
There are 40ish suggestions turning around the recycling unused items in this topic. Good luck suggesting something new

You can recycle barrels in fact (cliff explosives)!