Transforming dumps into gold mines. Experiences from Swedish case studies

Abstract

This article discusses the transformation of landfills from dumps to an alchemist's dream-gold mines-by highlighting five Swedish case studies where the landfill has been extracted. It is shown that landfills are embedded in broader socio-technical systems, including technology, policies, culture, norms, markets, and networks. These artifacts have aligned into mutual dependencies under the notion that landfills are garbage dumps, which has entrapped the landfill in the prevailing "dump regime". At the present time there is a window of opportunity to escape the "dump regime." Dumps are being challenged by the circular economy, which has established instability in the regime. However, for landfills to transform into "gold mines" creative entrepreneurs with the capacity to understand the emergent properties of deposition -i.e. giving rise to a resource base -will be key. For further transformation, specialized mining actors, collaboration and further exogenous changes such as higher metal prices are necessary.

Integrating remediation and resource recovery: On the economic conditions of landfill mining

“…The hypothetical landfill is therefore set at 100,000 m 3 . It is common for landfills that previously were situated outside a city core to eventually become part of the main urban areas, due to urban expansion (Johansson et al, 2012). The landfill in this study is located in an expansive area in a mediumsized city (100,000 people) and is owned by a municipality.…”

“…This cost per ton is higher than what is seen in for example a Swedish remediation project carried out in 2005 on an inactive area of the Stentippen landfill in Helsingborg. In that project, focused on contaminated soil, about 340,000 m 3 was excavated and the remediation cost was €13/ton (Johansson et al, 2012). The project, which was simpler in its setup than the scenario described in this study, consisted of the following main components: the material was excavated, screened with an XRF analyzer, and depending on contamination level the material was re-deposited, used as cover material, or deposited into another active landfill nearby owned by the same actor.…”

Institutional conditions for Swedish metal production: A comparison of subsidies to metal mining and metal recycling

“…Furthermore, as demonstrated in this paper, primary production has, compared to secondary production, for example, lower taxes, tax exemptions, higher research funds and governmental support to locate metals. This means, for example, that if metals are extracted from a secondary metal stock, such as a landfill, rather than the Earth crust, re-deposition of residues are subject to landfill tax, which makes such operations less profitable (Johansson et al, 2012). Therefore, if increased recycling is desired, which is reflected in several policy documents (European Commission, 2008;Swedish Government, 2013), secondary metal production also needs to become more interesting and thus favorable for commercial actors.…”

Paradigms on landfill mining: From dump site scavenging to ecosystem services revitalization

“…The value of the land commonly exceeds the value of the content (Hogland andKriipsalu 2001, van der Zee et al 2004). Projects proved that landfills in the form of mines can serve wider policy concerns (Johansson et al 2012) and that landfill mining can create jobs , reduce carbon emissions (Frändegård et al 2012), prevent future leakage, postpone metal scarcity and increase autonomy of governments. Last but not least, a full scale project was performed 2011-2013 in Kudjape, Saaremaa Island in Estonia.…”