From end-of-pipe to industrial ecology: What is the role of enhanced landfill mining?

Abstract

Industrial ecology aims at optimising resource flows throughout society. Landfills and industrial ecology are each other's opposites. The next logical step is that resources dumped into landfills are re-introduced into the material cycles. This article critically reviews whether this recovery of resources out of landfills can currently be realised in a sustainable way and what its role is within an industrial ecology context. The focus is on the evolution in waste management towards Enhanced Landfill Mining, and the impact the different aspects of integrated waste management and Enhanced Landfill Mining have on sustainability. This impact can be assessed by LCC (Life Cycle Costing) and LCA (Life Cycle Analysis). The current economic feasibility of Enhanced Landfill Mining is unfortunately not very sensitive to the recycling possibility of materials, as it is mainly depending on prices of recovered land and on the existing incentives for energy recovery. Most LCA studies on integrated waste management, however, show that recycling is environmentally more beneficial than energy recovery. Although Enhanced Landfill Mining is clearly beneficial from an industrial ecology perspective, the way it can be realised and the choices to be made between Waste to Energy and Waste to Material routes have to be further explored by sound data and improved LCC and LCA models.