LANDFILL MINING SITUATION ACROSS EUROPE AND POTENTIAL WITH A UK CASE STUDY

1. NETWORKING SESSION:
Circular economy and landfill mining: key
concepts to exploit waste as new resources
Landfill mining situation across Europe and
potential with a UK case study
Diogo Gomes, Stuart Wagland, Frederic Coulon
School of Water, Energy and Environment, Cranfield University, UK

2. What is enhanced
landfill mining?
“The integrated valorisation of (historic and/or
future) landfilled waste streams as both
materials (Waste-to-Material) and energy (Waste-
to-Energy), using innovative transformation
technologies and respecting the most stringent
social and ecological criteria.”
Enhanced Landfill Mining in view of multiple resource
recovery: a critical review (Jones et al., JCLEPRO, 2013)

3. Source: Binnemans et al. ,
JCLEPRO, 2014
ELFM overview: closing
the loop

4. ELFM transdisciplinary
science
Quadruple Helix Innovation
 Government, Academia, Industry and Citizens collaborating together to
drive structural changes far beyond the scope of any one organisation
could achieve on it’s own
 Involve all stakeholders in quadruple helix to innovate and experiment
in real world settings, in creating frictionless ecosystems

5. ELFM coverage and
credibility in EU
• Flanders: Multi-actor research consortium since 2008
• www.elfm.eu
• Several national research projects are running
• Erection EUROPEAN ENHANCED LANDFILL MINING
Consortium in march 2014 www.eurelco.org

6. Barriers for ELFM
The landfill is stuck in a dump regime
 EU Landfill Directive strongly advocates isolation, control, final closure and
post-monitoring
 This perception of landfills as hazardous, end stations for obsolete materials
displays clear signs of path-dependency and lock-in
 The fact that ELFM is not part of EU policy and regulatory frameworks causes
multiple challenges and uncertainties
 Such uncertainties regarding the market rules make it difficult for actors to
foresee the outcome of their investments
 Most of the benefits of landfill mining only occur on the societal level = key
policy challenge - coupling ELFM with remediation needs can offer a way
forward!

7. ELFM benefits
 Avoidance of landfill remediation costs: 0,1-1 trillion €
(if ELFM concept is used for all EU-landfills)
• A new resource recovery economy, with significant short,
medium and long term potential for EU SMEs in EU-27
and in the rest of the world
• CH4 extraction (in situ);
• Organic based materials (WtM or WtE) (ex situ);
• Metals (ex situ and/or in situ);
• Materials for building and construction (ex situ)
 Recovery of valuable land (in situ or ex situ)
(Jones et al., 2013)

8. Case Study 1 – The UK
Case
Criterion and database selection
20.000 landfills

9. Case Study 1 – The UK
Case
Suitable Landfills
20.000 landfills
63%
29%
8%
Landfills UK
not suitable
suitable
uncertain

10. Case Study 1 – The UK
Case
Waste composition: data collected from 9 UK landfills

11. Case Study 1 – The UK
Case
Life Cycle Assessment

12. Case Study 1 – The UK
Case
Cost Benefit Analysis

13. Case Study 2 – SRM
recovery potential
Investigating presence of Rare Earth Elements, critical
and valuable metals in the soil component of landfilled
waste
Core drills extracted across 4x landfill sites
Samples from 2 meters up to 25 meters in depth
Total of 55 core samples analysed

14. Case Study 2 – SRM
recovery potential
• Only 5 tons of PGMs estimated across 4x landfills
sites, but still equivalent to 148 million USD
• For the REEs, Nd would present the highest value with
9.2 million USD
• Al and Cu combined over all 4x sites = 400 million USD
• Waste-derived fuels from excavated materials is
highly energetic
• Comparable to that of RDF from MSW (up to 22
MJ/kg; Bosmans et al (2013))

15. Thank you for your
attention
For further information please contact me at:
D.Gomes@cranfield.ac.uk

16. Project Coordinator
Marco de la Feld
ENCO s.r.l.
m.delafeld@enco-consulting.it
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
programme under Grant Agreement No 641988