I remember asking once, we don't we just shoot our surplus trash off into the sun and was told that by the cost of launching it outweighs the benefits. Fair!
But what about all of the old satellites and space stations? Why don't we just send a giant magnet around the earth once or twice and then slingshot all that space junk into the sun and thus giving all science fiction writers (when they return from their strike) a plot point they can no longer use in their film scripts?
Seriously though, without the cost of breaching the atmosphere, this seems really cheap to pull, why don't we do this? Why isn't this a standard thing?
From what I understand is that the space x satellites when worn out, will slowly drop from orbit (because they already have a really low orbit) and burn up in the atmosphere. So there's that.
Spacex satellites (and all other satellites) have thrusters to drop their orbits. The problem is the old ones that either broke or never had thrusters.