system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Trek] If replicators turn matter into energy, do you get any energy back when you de-replicate something? (like all those extra dishes and silverware that come with replicated food)
gpt
When replicators are being used, we see frequent references to matter reserves. This implies that there isn't a *pure* energy -> matter conversion going on, and there is some dematerialised matter held in the replicator system, used during the replication process. 

It makes sense. It'd be far more energy efficient to dematerialise a bunch of base elements, hold them in storage, then rearrange them into set patterns. Doing it pure energy -> matter would use up orders of magnitude more energy.