Italian Scientist Proposes Craft to Clean Up Space Junk

Why blast things to earth to be destroyed in re-entry rather than blast them out into the universe for our alien neighbors to find?

Aww... cost & logistics you say? Oh well, it was a nice thought.

I've got an easier way. Of course it's too late, and I could be completely wrong.

But what if we were to put a thin coating of iron oxide or something, somewhere on the things we send into space. Wouldn't the earth's magnetic field slowly pull them towards us until they eventually burned up in the atmosphere?

"Marco Castronuovo of the Italian Space Agency believes he has found a solution: a space junk collecting spacecraft."

Ah, so we will be sending up Andy Griffith in Salvage 1 again.