Recovery technologies for materials in landfills

Europe hosts more than 500,000 landfills of which 90% are non-sanitary and around 80% essentially contain Urban Solid Waste (https://www.eurelco.org/infographic). Urban landfills (UL) and extractive (mining and metallurgical) industry residues (EIR) are potential sources of materials that, if recovered, can contribute to the circularity of economy. Among other factors, technology plays one essential role in the viability of landfill mining projects (Krook, et al, 2012). The methods for mapping landfills, sampling and characterizing waste, the readiness of technologies, the optimization of technologies and their combination in treatment and recovery schemes, their applicability, costs and environmental impacts effect the valorization of waste from landfills. This report addresses Deliverable 1.1 “Recovery technologies for materials in landfills” developed by Working Group 2 of COST Action “Mining the European Anthroposphere” (MINEA). MINEA aims to quantify and assess the material resources and reserves in the Anthroposphere and consolidate existing knowledge related to the exploration, evaluation, classification and recovery of materials in anthropogenic deposits and waste flows. This report integrates the activities of the MINEA WG2 in the 1st Grant Period (May 2016 to April 2017). The following documents were developed: (1) Literature Review Report on practices and technologies for waste valorization from landfills (Calvo, 2016) and (2) MINEA WG2 Workshop on technologies in the landfill-mining sector, which resulted in an overview on landfill mining projects and on state-of-the-art as well as enhanced recovery technologies (Workshop on “Technologies for material recovery from landfills and mining residues”, Book of abstracts, 2016). This report also profits from the non published report on “Science and technology in enhanced landfill mining” (EURELCO, 2016), which has been developed by the Working Group II of the European Enhanced Landfill Mining Consortium (EURELCO). Both activities examine current practices, knowledge transfer and recovery technologies across European countries, research fields and disciplines. This information is essential to assess the availability of secondary material from landfills and the viability of landfill mining projects in the context of circular economy