As you might or might not know, Java (and yes, Nifty is written in Java) uses a garbage collector to clean up allocated memory which is no longer in use. This is a very nice and comfortable feature for most programs but can become a problem in realtime applications (like… let’s say… for example… a game). The garbage collection triggers whenever it feels like there is enough garbage to clean up and can’t be controlled directly leading to huge amounts of unused memory being freed at once causing the game to lag or stutter at that moment. To resolve this issue, all datastructures which are only used temporarly get recycled and reused whenever possible to prevent too much new allocations and cleanups. In the graphic below you can see the current memory usage of Nifty. After a manual garbage collection after loading the level, the used memory settles around 40MB of data with an automatic garbage collection every one to two minutes (which is much less than the previous once a second).

tl;dr: RECYCLE ALL THE THINGS!