Publication
Title
Systematic assessment of critical factors for the economic performance of landfill mining in Europe : What drives the economy of landfill mining?
Author
Abstract
Landfill mining (LFM) is a strategy to mitigate environmental impacts associated with landfills, while simultaneously recovering dormant materials, energy carriers, and land resources. Although several case study assessments on the economy of LFM exist, a broader understanding of the driving factors is still lacking. This study aims at identifying generically important factors for the economy of LFM in Europe and understanding their role in developing economically feasible projects in view of different site, project and system-level conditions. Therefore, a set-based modeling approach is used to establish a large number (531,441) of LFM scenarios, evaluate their economic performance in terms of net present value (NPV), and analyze the relationships between input factors and economic outcome via global sensitivity analysis. The scenario results range from -139 Euro to +127 Euro/Mg of excavated waste, with 80% of the scenarios having negative NPVs. Variations in the costs for waste treatment and disposal and the avoided cost of alternative landfill management (i.e. if the landfill was not mined) have the strongest effect on the scenario NPVs, which illustrates the critical role of system level factors for LFM economy and the potential of policy intervention to incentivize LFM. Consequently, system conditions should guide site selection and project development, which is exemplified in the study for two extreme regional archetypes in terms of income and waste management standard. Future work should further explore the developed model to provide decision support on LFM strategies in consideration of alternative purposes, stakeholders, and objectives. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Waste management. - Oxford
Publication
Oxford : 2019
ISSN
0956-053X
DOI
10.1016/J.WASMAN.2019.07.007
Volume/pages
95 (2019) , p. 674-686
ISI
000499920700065
Pubmed ID
31351655
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Project info
EU Training Network for Resource Recovery through Enhanced Landfill Mining (NEW-MINE).
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 08.01.2020
Last edited 02.01.2025
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