Publication
Title
Assessing the economic potential of landfill mining : review and recommendations
Author
Abstract
As landfill mining (LFM) gains public attention, systematic assessment of its economic potential is deemed necessary. The aim of this review is to critically analyze the usefulness and validity of previous economic assessments of LFM. Following the life cycle costing (LCC) framework, (i) the employed methods based on goal and scope, technical parameters and data inventory, and modelling choices were contrasted with respect to (ii) the synthesized main findings based on net profitability and economic performance drivers. Results showed that the selected studies (n=15) are mostly case study-specific and concluded that LFM has a weak economic potential, hinting at the importance of favorable market and regulation settings. However, several method issues are apparent as costs and revenues are accounted at different levels of aggregation, scope and scale-from process to sub-process level, from private to societal economics, and from laboratory to pilot-scale, respectively. Moreover, despite the inherent large uncertainties, more than half of the studies did not perform any uncertainty or sensitivity analyses posing validity issues. Consequently, this also limits the usefulness of results as individual case studies and as a collective, towards a generic understanding of LFM economics. Irrespective of case study-specific or generic aims, this review recommends that future assessments should be learning-oriented. That is, uncovering granular information about what builds up the net profitability of LFM, to be able to systematically determine promising paths for the development of cost-efficient projects.
Language
English
Source (journal)
DETRITUS
Publication
Padova : Cisa publisher , 2019
DOI
10.31025/2611-4135/2019.13883
Volume/pages
8 (2019) , p. 125-140
ISI
000504065300011
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
EU Training Network for Resource Recovery through Enhanced Landfill Mining (NEW-MINE).
Publication type
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
VABB-SHW
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 05.02.2020
Last edited 25.04.2022
To cite this reference