Citizens taking action ~ Vancouver, Lower Mainland, and beyond.


Showing posts with label landfill mining. Show all posts
Showing posts with label landfill mining. Show all posts

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Buried treasure

Another reason not to build waste-to-energy plants that vaporize plastic. It may become a valuable resource sooner than we think.

Check out this article from the Times (London): "Rubbish dumps are regarded by the recycling industry as an untapped source of riches, with an estimated 200 million tonnes of plastic buried as landfill since the late 1980s. At today's prices of £200 a tonne the discarded plastic has a value of about £40 billion. Alongside it are smaller, but still significant, quantities of valuable metals, including copper and aluminium."