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Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

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Re: Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

#51

Post by ianburrell »

lm28469 wrote: post #21
bradley13 wrote: post #9

Some years ago, Switzerland completely stopped using landfills. All garbage is incinerated. The resulting slag is then processed to reclaim nearly all metals as well as some other important elements. Of course, the burning creates CO2. However, you don't have to mine and refine metal ores, and the incinerators also generate electricity and district heating. So the ecological balance is actually pretty good. As a fina…

> Of course, the burning creates CO2 When burning trash CO2 is way down the list of things I worry about personally.

We need to reduce carbon emissions to zero in couple decades. Burning trash isn't an issue now, but we need to keep in mind that isn't really "green" when deciding to build more plants.

The problem with burning trash is that it turns all of the carbon into CO2. Trash in landfill does produce methane which is worse greenhouse gas, but it sounds like landfill are starting to capture or burn methane. The best option is likely to separate biologic waste and compost it. That produces some CO2 but puts the remaining carbon back where can be used. Plastic doesn't degrade, paper can be recycled, which means most of the carbon is sequestered or reused.

Re: Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

#52

Post by Gud »

bregma wrote: post #44
bradley13 wrote: post #9

Some years ago, Switzerland completely stopped using landfills. All garbage is incinerated. The resulting slag is then processed to reclaim nearly all metals as well as some other important elements. Of course, the burning creates CO2. However, you don't have to mine and refine metal ores, and the incinerators also generate electricity and district heating. So the ecological balance is actually pretty good. As a fina…

> eventually will leak lovely chemicals into groundwater Far better to transform them into even worse chemicals through exothermic reactions and send them invisibly through the air to all your neighbours.

Is this really what happens? My home country Sweden does the same thing, burning garbage, if that was really the case I doubt it would be allowed.

Re: Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

#53

Post by robocat »

SoftTalker wrote: post #11
gosub100 wrote: post #7

I've wondered why they haven't implemented a compromise between recycling and tossing, which would just be segregating certain materials for later sale or recycling. If they put all the plastic bottles in one section of landfill, all the glass, etc it would be a bet toward there someday being a change in technology, materials science, or market prices that might make it worth mining. It would also be cheaper because…

You should visit the average landfill to get a firsthand impression of the sheer volume of trash that arrives every day. Sorting at that point would require a huge investment in infrastructure and technology on-site. Individuals sorting their own trash at the other end of the stream is quite easy and costs only a few minutes of their time. It's like diverting the flow of a tributary stream vs. diverting the Mississip…

> costs only a few minutes of their time.

You are so casual about throwing away an irreplaceable resource.

Like many conversations about the environment and taxation, many people seem happy to talk all day about how others can afford to pay and about how others should pay.

Personally, I worry about how costly those defuse costs are overall. How often do we save uneconomic resources by wasting aggregate large amounts of resources. The tradeoffs seem to be rarely counted. Only one side of the ledger is looked at.

In context Switzerland decided that all garbage is incinerated. Perhaps we should presume that Switzerland has done this because it is the most enviromentally friendly and least wasteful measure.

Re: Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

#54

Post by astrange »

Solvency wrote: post #24
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has way too much space for incineration to become more cost-effective than just dumping it in a giant hole in the ground.

Until you go to your local landfill and see the massive fuming hellscape spanning thousands of acres with mountains of garbage just laying there and mentally extrapolate how it will look even 10 more years from now.

My local landfill is at the southern end of San Francisco Bay and there really isn't anything notable about it.

Re: Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

#55

Post by morsch »

gruez wrote: post #26
bradley13 wrote: post #9

Some years ago, Switzerland completely stopped using landfills. All garbage is incinerated. The resulting slag is then processed to reclaim nearly all metals as well as some other important elements. Of course, the burning creates CO2. However, you don't have to mine and refine metal ores, and the incinerators also generate electricity and district heating. So the ecological balance is actually pretty good. As a fina…

>you don't have literal square miles of landfills that occupy land Land area is a non-issue. Google says Switzerland produces "80 to 90 million tonnes" of garbage per year. Assuming that garbage has the same density of water, and a landfill is 10 meters deep, a 1 sq mi landfill will last 287 years. Moreover, Wikipedia says Switzerland has 15,940 square miles of land, so that will only take up 0.006% of the country's…

Is your math right? 90 million tons of water/10 m gets me 1.7 km2, so a 1 sq mi landfill would last around ... 1 year, not 287.

That said, of the 90 million of waste, 60-70 million is construction waste, and just 6 million tons is municipal waste. On the other hand, I'm not sure you can just assume that waste has the same density as water; from a cursory glance it seems to about 1/3.

https://www.bafu.admin.ch/bafu/en/home/topics/waste/in-brief...

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28volume+of+90+million... (sorry I was all out of napkins)

Re: Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

#56

Post by calamari4065 »

Loughla wrote: post #31
grogenaut wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm super excited for all the plastic in the world and all the devices that we use everyday to rot because we developed a bacteria that eats it and now your iPhone internals have an infection and your phone just disintegrates and the steering wheel falls off your car

Ringworld. That's the basic idea of the underlying society wide failure in that book.

Except that bacterium was introduced as a weapon specifically to destroy that society. Weren't they trying to take control of the ring once society collapsed?

Re: Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

#57

Post by progne »

I've heard that the biggest barrier to reuse is the expense of purifying the inputs of the various recycling processes. A few stray baked beans can gum up the works. If so the economics would be greatly changed by a robot running AI software that can just sort and wash trash the way we're supposed to at home.

Re: Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

#58

Post by feoren »

grogenaut wrote: post #23
kulahan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology of landfills has massively improved over the years. It's not the old pile of garbage covered in birds forever; they turn them into parks and whatnot. It's probably worth looking up, because there's some cool scientific advancements behind it. I'm pulling this next sentence completely out of my ass, but I also imagine it would be convenient, once we develop bacteria to break this stuff down in an enviro…

I'm super excited for all the plastic in the world and all the devices that we use everyday to rot because we developed a bacteria that eats it and now your iPhone internals have an infection and your phone just disintegrates and the steering wheel falls off your car

Lots of organisms eat wood and cotton. How often does your furniture and clothing just randomly disintegrate? You really cannot imagine a middle ground between these products existing for millions of years vs. your steering wheel falling apart while you're driving?

Re: Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

#59

Post by feoren »

progne wrote: post #57

I've heard that the biggest barrier to reuse is the expense of purifying the inputs of the various recycling processes. A few stray baked beans can gum up the works. If so the economics would be greatly changed by a robot running AI software that can just sort and wash trash the way we're supposed to at home.

I've never before heard anyone ever suggest that we're "supposed to" be sorting and washing our trash at home. What an unbelievably wasteful and pointless notion.

Re: Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

#60

Post by progne »

feoren wrote: post #59
progne wrote: post #57

I've heard that the biggest barrier to reuse is the expense of purifying the inputs of the various recycling processes. A few stray baked beans can gum up the works. If so the economics would be greatly changed by a robot running AI software that can just sort and wash trash the way we're supposed to at home.

I've never before heard anyone ever suggest that we're "supposed to" be sorting and washing our trash at home. What an unbelievably wasteful and pointless notion.

See for example the Seattle "tips to recycle right"

  * Empty, Clean, and Dry
  * When in Doubt, Find Out
  * Keep Bags Out
The page goes into detail on each. This isn't unusual in my experience.

https://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-a...

Here's an online tool to help people identify the various kinds of recyclables and direct them correctly. It isn't easy and I doubt few Seattle residents know all of these.

https://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-a...

If everyone started sorting and cleaning according to these rules the fraction of usable recyclables would increase a lot.

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