Recycling

The materials used in technology level I are completely bio degradable and production volumes probably won't be very high. Beside possible health issues there are vew problems with recycling to expect.

The materials used in technology level II stay around longer but naturally occur in nature in masses. Recycling issues are yet hard to predict.

In technology level III it gets problematic.
E.g. diamond doesn't really decay which is good for engineering but bad for nature.

recycling of diamondoid AP structures

Usage of microcomponents

Diamondoid Mechanosynthesis is an irreversible process. Once a DME is assembled it can not be taken apart again (see atomically precise disassembly). The only way for the bound carbon back to the biosphere is by burning it at sufficiently high temperatures (See the speculative: "hot gas phase recycling cycle"). What will help alleviating this problem is the organisation of APM products into microcomponents (which are quite a bit bigger than DMEs) that can reversibly be joined together and thus can potentially be reused and recomposed. More about those microcomponents can be found on the "assembly levels" page. Microcomponents only need to run through the upper basic assembly levels of a nanofactory (microcomponent recomposer) to get recomposed to a different product.

Tagging microcomponents can help to successfully salvage microcomponents from macroproducts that became singed or broken with random fracture plane.

Inter microcomponent joints that do not destroy themselves (or some of the involved microcomponents) when ruptured are preferable in most applications where maximum strength isn't a necessity. For this either trivial sticking of coplanar surfaces (Van der Waals force) or specially designed controlled breakage locking mechanisms suffice. If the joints are too weak and do not break in big chunks collectively (through whatever implemented mechanism) rub-off microcomponent dust may be an health issue.

Preference of machine phase

Beside being a necessity for APM in all technology levels but t.level 0 keeping everything in machine phase also prevents spill of AP micro- and nanoparticles (that is microcomponents and DMEs) in the envirounment. The rule to never let go of diamondoid products (never let them escape the machine phase) to keep the biosphere clean obviously has to be dropped at some size level arond the millimeter scale though. In many cases its convenient when makro products come preassembled (laptop) but there are also cases where finding the most pleasing form of assembly is most intuitive and easiest done by hand (art). Such manual assembly of diamondoid AP products will maybe be doable by e.g. (speculative) quasi welding.

• semi-intelligent microcomponent metamaterial designed to allow abrasion only in big chunks ?

Reuse of microcomponents

Assuming a speculative global microcomponent redistribution system will come into existence then for big immobile objects beyond the weight of an adult person (like buildings) it may be possible to "suck" them away if they are no longer needed. For everyday sized objects running arround having them physically tethered to such a network will often not be possible (e.g. backpacks, drinking cans).

General

Advanced well designed AP Technology will probably greatly reduce the amount of waste that escapes in the environment. (Speculative) The most critical time is maybe when t.level III arrives but is not yet advanced. Recognizing and cropping out nests of damaged microcomponents will be a rather nontrivial problem. See "self repairing systems".

Production of waste that is irrecoverable at its production time is unavoidable. (Even nature lacking human influence faces this problem. See: great oxygen event) What we can do is to try to limit the rate of irrecoverable waste production to such low levels that technology is likely to catch up to that challenge before the pollution grows beyond all bounds. Something like a dynamic equilibrium.