Does recycling use more energy then standard waste disposal?

Yes, recycling uses more energy than trashing. It takes very little energy to throw steel, aluminium, glass, plastic and paper into a hole in the ground.

But to produce more steel, aluminium, glass, plastic and paper takes vast amounts of energy. Almost twenty times as much as what it takes to recycle all these resources. And all these resources are non-renewable. When we have used them all, there's none left!

So it is far cheaper to recycle and reuse.