Landfill Mining, the Next Boom Industry?
by Matthew McDermott, Brooklyn, NY on 08.27.08
photo: D'Arcy Norman
Search the TreeHugger archives and you’ll find countless articles on the environmental and economic benefits of recycling. While for many of us separating recyclable waste from trash destined for the landfill and food scraps for the compost pile, it obviously wasn’t always this way and, as Reuters recently reported, the world’s landfills are a potential gold-mine of salvageable waste.
Amount of Rubbish Set to Rise
Despite increased awareness about the virtues of recycling, according to the OECD, the amount of trash making it into landfills is expected to nearly double in the next two decades—from 1.6 billion tonnes per year in 2005 to 3 billion tonnes in 2030. The (slightly) good news is that the OECD also estimates that average recycling rates in the developed world will increase from about 50% today to 60% in 2030.
What's There Already Worth Billions
Thanks to rising oil prices, the value of all that plastic we've already absent-mindedly thrown into our landfills is really worth something. In Britain alone the landfills contain some 200 million tonnes of discarded plastic, which could be worth £60 billion ($111 billion) if recovered and recycled.
Chris Dow of Closed Loop London described the situation to Reuters,
Just imagine the resources that are lying in those landfills—it could be incredible. But the insane thing is that we are talking now about investing millions into tapping into a resource under the ground, when the real tragedy is that every week we’re still dumping tonnes and tonnes of plastic into more landfills. It’s an act of vandalism against the environment.
And James Kunstler thought it’d take a post-peak oil societal meltdown for people in the developed world to start scavenging trash heaps for resources...
via :: Reuters
Recycling
Shipping Waste 10,000 Miles for Recycling Still Better Than Landfilling
How To: Recycle Your Computer
4 Ways to Earn Cash From Recycling
Bioplastics Recycling Consortium Wants to Reuse Every Last Bit of Plastic
Stair of the Week: Why We Have Handrails
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US Electric Grid Not Keeping Up With Renewable Energy Growth
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Brilliant. Besides plastic, I'm sure there's plenty of non-ferrous metal sitting in there too we could harvest. Not to mention, gold and other rare metals from discarded electronics.
What's Already They Worth Billions
What's wrong with this statement?
I have always wondered what in our collective conciousness allowed us to expend effort to extract resources from the earth, use them once, them dump them back into a hole.
I am never a big fan of lanfill, but it is good to see that some of them can be digged back up and recycle. but i guess it is going to be pretty expensive to process such kind of plastic as they are probably contaminated.
apart from landfill, some ppl come up with an idea of using waste as construction material, which is think is a great idea.
MTSK@Colors of Swallowtail
It's sooooo sad they we thrown so much away. I'm a bit of an eccentric when it comes to recycling. I spend my Sunday mornings collecting recyclables. Since I live in California and there's a CRV on all containers their's money to be made on discarded cans and bottles and other materials. As well we have one of the best and easiest recycling programs around. Even though this is the case most folks are just too lazy to recycle (I live in RedNeck Republican land). Last Sunday I pulled about a 100 lbs of perfectly good cardboard out on one dumpster and probably another 200 lbs out of another. I loaded it all in to the back on my truck. I found a cardboard recycling dumpster and threw it in. The thing is that if I didn't do this 300 lbs of cardboard would of ended up in the landfill. I see this kind of waste all the time.
We are a small town of 90,000 and have a great recycling program that doesn't get used they way it should. Recycling should be mandated.... Very sad....
Frank
A few years ago it was already economically viable to mine US landfills, simply to retrieve the aluminum in the cans that had been dumped. Sorting for other materials should make it an extremely profitable.
In the USA, fills or part-fill in use prior to Sub-part D standards of RCRA were enforced (probably late 1980s') are filled with hazardous waste as well as wood and stone and plastic and steel, etc. Quite a nasty proposition to send anyone in with a doser in such environments.
Society will at last have a valid use for robots.