Tag Archives: landfill mining
By Accounting for Energy– (3 min read) This month, Alupro announced that in 2018, the recycling of aluminium cans hit 75 per cent – a three per cent rise on 2017 figures. In an environment where household recycling has reached a plateau, aluminium is a success story, and one which represents value across the supply chain. As well as helping to avoid unnecessary mining of Bauxite, last year, aluminium cans averaged £1,016 per tonne. Ideally, successful recycling would always feed a genuine market and, as resources become more scarce, we are looking for new ways to make the most of our waste. One route which is being explored is the extraction of valuable resources from landfill and e-waste. A UN report released earlier this year estimates the value of e-waste at more than £47.8 billion, largely held in precious metals such as gold and platinum, which are used to make electronics. The report – A New Circular Vision for Electronics – claims that around 80 per cent of the WEEE produced worldwide ends up in landfill, or dismantled with little or no regulation, in developing countries. Processing hazardous waste without the appropriate safety controls is a danger to the health of workers, but the loss of valuable resources adds another dimension. If we are to meet our circular aims and build a resource efficient economy, we need to target those materials that can easily be applied to manufacture new products. Landfill mining is another option. While this has taken place since the 1950s, it has recently come under greater scrutiny, with the launch of a new project in Belgium which uses plasma technology to heat waste to high temperatures and transform it into renewable gas. In the UK, tapping the energy held in landfill waste to produce renewable electricity is commonplace. Of more than 500 landfill sites dotted around the UK – roughly five per county – 90 per cent produce renewable energy through landfill gas capture technology, and these sites have the potential to power every household in Northern Ireland for a year. Landfill gas equipment pays dividends, both to the company that installs and manages the technology, and to the landfill owner, which receives royalty payments for hosting the equipment on its site. As long as the payments are regularly audited to ensure that rates reflect the current set-up, landfill gas represents a beneficial way for sustainable objectives and economics to complement each other.
