For more than 100 years, the world has been discarding its unwanted waste in landfill sites but according to experts landfill mining may be the next big thing in dealing with this issue.

While landfill remediation measures are costly and environmentally risky, Peter Tom Jones President of EURELCO and EU MSCA-ETN NEW-MINE believes these factors can be drastically reduced by combining landfill remediation with resource recovery of the excavated waste through enhanced landfill mining.

So, what exactly is enhanced landfill mining?

Officially defined as “the integrated valorisation of landfilled waste streams as materials and energy”, enhanced mining extracts valuable materials from both landfilled industrial waste and municipal solid waste.

In the case of municipal solid waste landfill mining separates waste into directly recyclable materials (glass, plastic, metals, and aggregates) and a refuse-derived fuel fraction, which is further converted into high-added-value products.

Using the new plasma gasification technology, Jones says it is possible to transform this refuse-derived fuel fraction into hydrogen and a mineral residue fraction that is then upcycled into a green, low-carbon cement.

“The enhanced landfill mining approach is currently being demonstrated in two flagship projects funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme, ETN NEW-MINE (for municipal solid waste) and METGROW+ (for industrial waste),”Jones notes.

He adds: “This sort of mining can transform landfills, particularly those in urban environments, from a threat and a cost, into an opportunity for resource recovery. It closes the loop, injecting additional resource circularity and resilience into the economy.”

What’s next for the technology?

As primary resources become scarcer and external costs are increasingly internalized, the possibilities for landfill mining are set to increase.

But first, legal frameworks need to be created that allow landfill mining to prosper in harmony with local residents living close to the targeted landfills, who need to be integrated right from the early stages. And local job creation, in both high and low skilled roles, should be recognized as a crucial benefit.

“We need to change the way we think about landfills. They should no longer be considered as static end-stations for obsolete materials, but rather as dynamic resource reservoirs to be unlocked,” Jones says.

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