We should celebrate such rarities:
There are millions of tons (and billions of dollars in value) of recoverable metals, plastics, and other materials currently stored in landfills. The simple reason mining does not occur is economics: for multiple reasons, the costs to mine a solid waste landfill are currently greater than the value of recoverable materials.
The cost of any mining operation includes extraction of the target ore, processing to concentrate the ore (beneficiation), managing the associated wastes, transporting and selling the material, and finally closing and reclaiming the mine. These costs must be lower than the revenues made from selling the mined material. While the mining of solid waste landfills has many environmental benefits, it is subject to the same economic conditions as traditional mining.
Entirely, wholly and exactly spot on.
But couldn’t a bright lad at the end of his secondary schooling write much the same piece?
Well, yes dearieme. In fact I seem to remember thinking about then that, if it was profitable to extract anything from the rubbish, people wouldn’t bother to dump it in the first place.
The obvious conclusion is that the government needs to subsidise the processing of trash into treasure until such time as someone bright (so not in the public sector) has invented a way to do it profitably.
So natural sources of metals are cheaper to mine than landfills. Presumably because they are more concentrated or in places with a low concentration of nimbys.
Amazeballs.
Bit further on, one Jeff Murray;
“… Their motivation was not recovery of recyclable materials or remediation, but righting a perceived wrong when the property was established as a landfill site over 40 years ago.
This story showcases one of the issues facing landfill mining in the United States. In Europe, where they view landfills more negatively, they’ve been mining old landfill sites for decades.“
I’ll take his word for it, but how true is that?
“Presumably because they are more concentrated”
I would hazard a guess it’s more a case of being able to mine for a specific mineral, rather than trying to separate numerous different metals from each other – such as on a typical printed circuit board, for instance.
I was born and lived in a pit village which had a huge slag heap dominating the landscape – colliery spoil from nearly 150 years of mining.
I was aware that back in the late 19th Century these gave rise to a scam. Gold particles are often found in coal seams, sparsely scattered. These end up in slag heaps. The scam was to convince mine owners the amount of gold was very large and could be extracted – gimme your money.
Test extraction sites were set up and produced small samples of gold dust – bought by the scammers. More cash was needed to scale up the operation where after the scammers disappeared leaving the owner with less money and a lot of useless equipment. I thought this was well known, but maybe not.
I remember hearing an interview with one of these recycling wallahs on the radio and he was going on about how we needed to clean everything and separate everything and not to squash plastic bottles before putting them in the recycling.
F me, I thought, why doesn’t he just ask us to recycle things and send him the money.
It’s right, which is why the article is in an obscure publication like Gizmodo and not in the Guardian or Telegraph.
JohnB: That was the plot of an episode of one of those saturday morning westerns, possibly Champion The Wonder Horse. Scammers shot gold dust into the ground, then a few days later brought investors to the site and “discovered” gold bearing soil worth investing in.
I would imagine urban mining for BT copper would also yield a fortune too.
At one point the board of AT T was worried – they were sitting on hte largest copper deposit in hte world.
https://www.theregister.com/Print/2011/09/22/bt_copper_cable_theft/
@ Andrew Carter – “Not to squash plastic bottles before putting them in the recycling” Which is exactly what the compactor in the collection truck does!
@ Zaichik – BT already have their eyes on this lucrative source of revenue, which is why they are so keen to push us onto fibre…
I think it was during the late 90s, but at one point, BT’s share price was at quite the discount to the notional value of all the copper in the network.
On the other hand, I’m not convinced if anyone knew just how much of the cabling was actually that horrible ally/copper mix.
@DMD
Worse yet, how much was lead jacketed.
“I think it was during the late 90s, but at one point, BT’s share price was at quite the discount to the notional value of all the copper in the network.”
Something tells me that if a latter day Lord Hanson decided to buy BT and close it down and sell all the copper wires to make a killing he would soon discover that the State would be knocking on his door wanting a word…….there may be the illusion of private property in the West, but it only goes so far.
Remember ,
In the U.S.
The re-miner probably takes over bonding and water treatment responsibility for the landfill, no small obligation.
Recycling has changed the game, either valuable minerals are absent, or are buried under many layers of trash.
Even if, as rumored, recyclers just put the materials in landfills, the worthwhile materials would be in pockets interspersed amongst trash, requiring exploration to determine their location.
Some things are better left buried.
KEZO, one of the wonders of the modern world and a national treasure, which despite its miraculous efficiency has been copied nowhere else than in Hinwil, Switzerland, home of the Sauber Formula One team. Possibly therefore Not a Good Idea.