This paper examines the market potential of disposed shredder waste, a resource that is increasingly emphasized as a future mine. A framework with gate requirements of various outlets was developed and contrasted with a pilot project focusing on excavated waste from a shredder landfill, sorted in an advanced recycling facility. Only the smallest fraction by percentage had an outlet, the metals (8%), which were sold according to a lower quality class. The other fractions (92%) were not accepted for incineration, as construction materials or even for re-deposition. Previous studies have shown similar lack of marketability. This means that even if one fraction can be recovered, the outlet of the other material is often unpredictable, resulting in a waste disposal problem, which easily prevents a landfill mining project altogether. This calls for marketability and usability of deposited waste to become a central issue for landfill mining research. The paper concludes by discussing how concerned actors can enhance the marketability, for example by pre-treating the disposed waste to acclimatize it to existing sorting methods. However, for concerned actors to become interested in approaching unconventional resources such as deposited waste, greater regulatory flexibility is needed in which, for example, re-deposition could be allowed as long as the environmental benefits of the projects outweigh the disadvantages.

In this paper, we present an overview of interdisciplinary research from Ph.D. students working at the Division of Environmental Technology and Management at Linköping University, Sweden. Each of the Ph.D. students addresses the overall challenge of sustainability transitions in their research, although the themes and content of research varies considerably between individuals, encompassing research on actors, networks, products, materials, services and systems from the public and private sector, operating locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. The scientific literature and methods used to frame and conduct studies varies considerably within the group, as does the individual focus on immediate issues of sustainability.

This article analyzes the economic potential of integrating material separation and resource recovery into a landfill remediation project, and discusses the result and the largest impact factors. The analysis is done using a direct costs/revenues approach and the stochastic uncertainties are handled using Monte Carlo simulation.

Two remediation scenarios are applied to a hypothetical landfill. One scenario includes only remediation, while the second scenario adds resource recovery to the remediation project. Moreover, the second scenario is divided into two cases, case A and B. In case A, the landfill tax needs to be paid for re-deposited material and the landfill holder does not own a combined heat and power plant (CHP), which leads to disposal costs in the form of gate fees. In case B, the landfill tax is waived on the re-deposited material and the landfill holder owns its own CHP.

Results show that the remediation project in the first scenario costs about €23/ton. Adding resource recovery as in case A worsens the result to −€36/ton, while for case B the result improves to −€14/ton. This shows the importance of landfill tax and the access to a CHP. Other important factors for the result are the material composition in the landfill, the efficiency of the separation technology used, and the price of the saleable material.

This paper reviews landfill mining research. By applying industrial ecology and transition perspectives, it aims to address two research questions: (i) Why should we learn how to mine the landfills? and (ii) Why don’t we mine the landfills? Emphasis is on how institutional conditions influence feasibility and further dissemination of this strategy. While benefits of landfill mining mainly materialise on the societal level, it is concluded that current policy, legislative and market conditions provide minor incentives for private actors to engage in such activities. Facilitating realisation is therefore not just a matter of knowledge production and technology but will rely on knowledge dissemination and strong actor networks that engage in politics, influence public opinion and advocate landfill mining as a way to solve wider societal concerns.

Landfill mining is a relatively unproven, still uncertain concept for extracting resources from landfills. Previous studies in the field have mainly focused on solving local environmental problems related to leaching and other landfill management issues, or characterizing the material composition of various landfills. Few, however, have used a systematic approach when evaluating the environmental and economic potential of landfill mining, and fewer still have quantified this potential. Furthermore, discussions regarding the technical, legal, and organizational conditions of landfill mining are largely lacking. This lack of knowledge and experience creates uncertainties that make most landfill mining initiatives high-risk investments and consequently hinders the development of knowledge in the field. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to present the development and application of a systems analysis approach for evaluating the economic and environmental potential of landfill mining designed to handle the uncertainties surrounding this concept.

The approach aims to incorporate all relevant processes related to landfill mining, and to combine LCA methodology with Monte Carlo simulation to incorporate the inherent uncertainties into the result. The approach is based on one or more scenarios, the results of which can be compared with each other, as well as with a reference scenario. The scenarios are constructed using five different aspects that have been identified in previous studies as being relevant for the environmental and economic potential: landfill characteristics, organizational setup, policies and legislation, market conditions, and technology. These scenarios can be set up on a variety of levels, from identifying the impact of strategic policies regarding landfill mining to evaluating small landfill mining projects. The environmental analysis uses LCA and produces results on a global and regional scope, while the economic analysis is done from a project owner’s perspective using direct revenues and costs. Results from the approach can be used not only to see the net result for each scenario, but also to recognize which processes contribute the most to the result, and how important these are relative to other processes.

Results from the environmental potential show the resource potential and climate implications of mining all, or parts of, the Swedish municipal solid waste landfills. The metal content in these landfills corresponds to about three years of ferrous and up to eight years of non-ferrous scrap usage in Sweden. Additionally, the amount of combustible material is enough to cover the Swedish demand for more than five years. If all the landfills in the study were to be remediated and mined of resources, over 50 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent emissions can be avoided, comparable to Swedish annual emissions. The positive result can mainly be attributed to the avoided emissions, created by the material and energy recycling processes.

The economic potential has been analyzed from a landfill owner’s perspective by including direct costs and revenues in the evaluation. The thesis shows that by integrating material recovery into an already planned remediation project, the economic result can improve under certain circumstances. Two of the most important factors, in addition to the material composition of the landfill, were found to be the landfill tax and ownership of, and access to, a combined heat and power plant.

In summary, the thesis shows that there are many potential benefits from recovering resources from landfills, although they are dependent on a variety of factors. Three types of key factors contributing to the environmental and economic potential of landfill mining have been found: site-specific factors,  project factors, and external factors. By using the systems analysis approach presented in this thesis, the absolute and relative impact of these factors, regarding both environmental and economic impact for a specific landfill mining project, can be identified.

Studies concerning landfill mining have historically focused on reclamation of land space and landfill remediation. A limited number of studies, however, have evaluated landfill mining combined with resource recovery, most of them being pilot studies or projects with little emphasis on resource extraction. This implies that many uncertainties remain related to landfill mining. With a growing interest in environmental concerns around the globe, the environmental evaluation of large-scale projects has become an increasingly important issue. A common way of conducting such an evaluation is to use Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). However, LCA by itself might not take into account all the inherent uncertainties in landfill mining. This article describes an approach for environmental evaluation of landfill mining that combines the principles of Life Cycle Assessment and Monte Carlo Simulation. In order to demonstrate its usability for planning and evaluation purposes, the approach is also applied to a hypothetical landfill mining case by presenting examples of the types of results it can produce. Results from this approach are presented as cumulative probability distributions, rather than a single result figure. By presenting results in this way, the landfill mining practitioner will get a more complete view of the processes involved and will have a better decision base.

This paper reviews landfill mining research. By applying industrial ecology and transition perspectives, it aims to address two research questions: (i) Why should we learn how to mine the landfills? and (ii) Why don’t we mine the landfills? Emphasis is on how institutional conditions influence feasibility and further dissemination of this strategy. While benefits of landfill mining mainly materialise on the societal level, it is concluded that current policy, legislative and market conditions provide minor incentives for private actors to engage in such activities. Facilitating realisation is therefore not just a matter of knowledge production and technology but will rely on knowledge dissemination and strong actor networks that engage in politics, influence public opinion and advocate landfill mining as a way to solve wider societal concerns.

This study analyzes the amount of material deposited in Swedish municipal solid waste landfills, how much is extractable and recyclable, and what the resource and climate implications are if landfill mining coupled with resource recovery were to be implemented in Sweden. The analysis is based on two scenarios with different conventional separation technologies, one scenario using a mobile separation plant and the other using a more advanced stationary separation plant. Further, the approach uses Monte Carlo simulation to address the uncertainties attached to each of the different processes in the scenarios. Results show that Swedens several thousand municipal landfills contain more than 350 million tonnes (t) of material. If landfill mining combined with resource recovery is implemented using a contemporary stationary separation plant, it would be possible to extract about 7 million t of ferrous metals and 2 million t of nonferrous metals, enough to meet the demand of Swedish industry for ferrous and nonferrous metals for three and eight years, respectively. This study further shows that landfill mining could potentially lead to the equivalent of a one-time reduction of about 50 million t of greenhouse gas emissions (carbon-dioxide equivalents), corresponding to 75% of Swedens annual emissions.

In conventional mining, prospecting methods are used to increase the degree of certainty with regard to the stock of metals. Similarly, prospecting in terms of "urban mining" aims to increase the information about metal stocks available for recovery in the built environment. Infrastructure systems, such as for power supply and heating, are rich in copper, aluminum and iron (including steel). For a number of reasons, pipes and cables remain in the ground after being taken out of use or disconnected. This is also true for entire obsolete systems. In this paper, these infrastructures "cold spots" are viewed as hibernating stock with a significant potential for urban mining. less thanbrgreater than less thanbrgreater thanThe infrastructure systems for AC and DC power, telecommunication, town gas and district heating in the city of Norrkoping, Sweden, have been quantified and spatially allocated with a GIS-based approach of Material Flow Analysis (MFA). About 20% of the total stock of aluminum and copper in these systems is found to be in hibernation. The findings also indicate that cables have been disconnected to a larger extent than pipes. As an example, cables for DC power, taken out of use in the late 1930s yet still in the ground, consist of 230 tonnes of copper. The results illustrate a clear tendency for larger stocks of hibernating copper and aluminum to be found in the central rather than the outer parts of the city. A reverse, ring-like pattern is true for iron, mostly because the central parts of the town gas pipes are used for fiber optics. less thanbrgreater than less thanbrgreater thanParticular focus has been placed on the industrial area of Sodra Butangen, which is slated for redevelopment and re-zoning from industrial to residential. Since the ground will be dug up for sanitation purposes anyway, the entire metal stock can be taken into prospecting consideration. Analysis shows that the chances of finding aluminum here are 28 times higher than in the rest of the city. less thanbrgreater than less thanbrgreater thanWe argue for an increased MFA focus on the heterogeneous complexity found in the details of the specific locale, rather than striving for generalized assumptions about the broader picture. In doing so, MFA could very well provide a tool for a future business line of urban mining of hibernating metal stocks.

Large technical systems serving the everyday needs of people, such as water supply systems, power gridsor communication networks, are rich in accumulated metals. Over time, parts of these systems have beentaken out of use without the system infrastructure being removed from its original location. Such metalstocks in hibernation thus constitute potential resource reservoirs accessible for recovery. In this paper,obsolete stocks of copper situated in the local power grids of two Swedish cities are quantified. Emphasisis also on economic conditions for extracting such “hibernating” cables. The results show that on a percustomer basis, the two power grids contain similar amounts of copper, i.e. 0.04e0.05 tonnes persubscriber. However, the share of the copper stock that is in hibernation differs between the grids. In thelarger grid of Gothenburg, almost 20% of the copper accumulated in the grid is no longer in use, while theobsolete share does not exceed 5% in the city of Linköping. For managers of local power grids, recovery ofhibernating cables could be beneficial if integrated with other maintenance work on the grid. At thepresent price of copper, however, separate recovery of obsolete cables is not economically justified.