How to clean up space junk in orbit?

we can figure out a way launch a large enough device that gather up multiple objects and return to earth on it's own without burning itself up. Could be well into the future. I'd had to lose human lives trying to collect this stuff. I'll have to suspect that, eventually, something's going to fall through and do enough damage to cause concern and recycling will be considered as an option.

Maybe not necessary to return materials to earth to recycle them.

to have these ejected farther out in space rather than have them fall back. That might not go well with some. We could find ourselves antagonizing some other civilization if our garbage reaches their planet. Congress would need to do an extensive study on this.

The distances are enormous. By the time we antagonize anyone we'll be gone or have moved on. I just object to throwing away stuff that could be reused. If we wanted to get rid of it forever, send it into the sun.

Maybe crash the stuff onto the moon and establish a recycling facility there. No atmosphere to burn it up in.

technology. I'd hate to waste precious metals but don't care for efforts that waste more energy than they give back. It seems that too little consideration to cause and effect is what always gets us into trouble eventually. Of course we don't always know what might be the ramifications of our experiments the first time we try them but only know of the condemnation that will come if something doesn't goes awry.

he was en-route to a penal colony planet
and ended up in a "galactic scrapyard"

,.

That's "Solider" the movie. He was dumped as trash because he was useless as a inbred soldier for whatever at their bidding. Being replaced by cloned or "superior" inbred soldier, which in the end was what he came to fight against as the trash planet had a population. The test of the new soldiers were used against this population and the old solider(Kurt) found a new meaning for life as a free person and left the doomed planet after the losing side tries blowing it up after the failed superior soldiers lost. Escaping in the ship and leaving the doomed leaders to their fate. A Hollywood ending alright. -----Willy