Title: [GreenYes] Re: INFO: landfilling mining begins in US, UK
I am not surprised to read this. I have written earlier that a
Professor Alka Zadgaonkar has managed to make cheap fuel out of
plastic waste.
http://www.plastic2petrol.com/index.html
Cambridge Resource Recovery managed to produce plastic lumbar product
which is 10 times harder that natural wood.
Nancy
http://greenbeingnancy.blogspot.com/
On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 5:08 AM, Neil Tangri <neil@no.address> wrote:
>
>
> ---
> The Times (London)
>
> August 12, 2008 Tuesday
>
> SECTION: HOME NEWS; Pg.17
>
> LENGTH: 655 words
>
> HEADLINE: High plastic prices raise prospect of rubbish mining
>
> BYLINE: Lewis Smith, Jill Sherman
>
> BODY:
>
>
> The value of second-hand plastic has risen so rapidly that mining
> operations to dig it out of rubbish dumps are forecast to begin within
> the decade.
>
> Waste suitable for recycling is already being dug out of landfill sites
> in the United States and it is thought that commodity prices are on the
> verge of making it a profitable option in Britain.
>
> Rubbish dumps are regarded by the recycling industry as an untapped
> source of riches with an estimated 200 million tonnes of plastic buried
> as landfill since the late Eighties. At today's prices of £ 200 a tonne
> the discarded plastic has a value of about £ 40billion and alongside it
> are smaller, but still sigificant, quantities of valuable metals,
> including copper and aluminium.
>
> Peter Mills, of New Earth Solutions, a specialist in waste treatment and
> recovery technology, said that small-scale operations to retrieve
> discarded plastic from landfill were already being considered in Britain.
>
> He said: "In the States they have gone back in and have been mining for
> plastic and metal. Within the UK we have an eye on it. Within the next
> decade, landfill mining in a controlled or limited basis is going to be
> viable. It reflects the commodities market and the way prices are going."
>
> Operations are likely to start as pilot schemes during remedial work on
> landfill sites, which are designed with linings to prevent waste leaking
> into the wider environment. So high have the price of commodities risen
> in the past two years, especially oil, that recycled materials are
> increasingly sought after. Plastics can be turned back into sheeting and
> packaging more cheaply than by using virgin materials and with fewer
> carbon emissions. They also have a high calorific value, so can be an
> attractive source of fuel.
>
> Mr Mills suggested that the value of plastic would soon rise high enough
> that entrepeneurs would find it worthwhile to scoop out the estimated
> three million tonnes that was swirling around the Pacific Ocean.
>
> A further benefit of landfill mining is that once material has been
> removed from the ground there will then be room to bury more waste.
> Local authorities face a growing shortage of landfill space.
>
> Peter Jones, an independent waste consultant, said: "If we dig up all
> the landfill sites in the UK since the late Eighties we could lay our
> hands on around 200 million tonnes of plastics. If we were going to do
> landfill mining we would do it for the plastics."
>
> He said that most of the 1,500 landfill sites used in the past three
> decades had to be left for 20-30 years once they were closed to give
> time for organic material to decompose and gases to escape - up to 70
> per cent of methane emissions are syphoned off and used to provide
> renewable energy. Because of this, he was convinced that most, if not
> all, landfill mining in Britain would be delayed until after 2020.
>
> Richard Woosnam, of Orchid Environmental, a waste consultancy, will join
> Mr Jones this year in London at Britain's first landfill mining
> conference, where they will outline its potential. "It has potential for
> the future," Mr Woosnam said. "Plastics are a rich source of energy and
> in the right type of system they can be... a valuable fuel."
>
> Landfill sites from the Eighties onwards would be the first to be
> considered for mining because there are good records of what is in them,
> including the location of hazardous materials such as asbestos, and
> because before then plastic was discarded in much lower quantities.
>
> The forecast comes after The Times reported yesterday that the prices of
> recycled materials, including plastic, paper and metal cans, had
> increased greatly over the past six years. What was once considered to
> be mere rubbish is now providing recycling companies with a valuable
> source of income, but many local authorities have missed out on the
> green bonanza because they are locked into disposal contracts that run
> for between 20 and 30 years.
>
> LOAD-DATE: August 12, 2008
>
> --
>
> The Observer (England)
>
> August 10, 2008
>
> SECTION: OBSERVER BUSINESS PAGES; Pg. 6
>
> LENGTH: 1009 words
>
> HEADLINE: Business & Media: Business: Where there's muck, there's brass.
> And, even better, plastic: With oil prices sky-high and landfill taxes
> rising, businesses and investors are finally starting to realise the
> value of what we throw away, says Zoe Wood
>
> BYLINE: Zoe Wood
>
> BODY:
>
>
> Modern life is rubbish - it generates about 100 million tonnes of it a
> year - and until recently not many firms wanted to get their hands
> dirty. However, soaring oil prices and landfill tax mean the economic
> benefits of recycling are starting to stack up.
>
> Recycling has been a money-spinner for Disney's Pixar, whose film Wall E
> features a robot left to clean up a litter-strewn and uninhabitable
> Earth after humans have abandoned it. But the studio has been accused of
> hypocrisy for launching a vast range of merchandise on the back of a
> film with an eco-friendly message.
>
> Back in the present day, however, 'the value of waste is now being
> realised,' says Peter Mills, commercial director at New Earth Solutions
> (NES), who reports the extreme phenomenon of 'landfill mining' in the
> US. 'People are going back in - in New York they are excavating
> landfill. That's something I've got one eye on here.'
>
> Mills's company is backed by what is thought to be the first retail fund
> purely focused on investing in UK recycling facilities. Launched last
> month with a target of £ 15m, the fund will provide an investment pot
> for the company, which works with local authorities and claims to be
> able to recycle up to 60 per cent of the waste dumped on UK doorsteps.
>
> The UK generates around 100 mil lion tonnes of waste a year from
> household, business and industrial users. This week, figures from the
> Office for National Statistics showed the household waste mountain
> decreasing slightly - from 25.8 million tonnes in 2006 to 25.6 million
> tonnes last year - with around 34 per cent of rubbish now recycled. That
> meant the volume of waste sent by councils to landfill also fell
> slightly, to 15.8 million tonnes from 16.9 million tonnes the previous
> year. Environment minister Joan Ruddock described the figures as 'good
> progress' but admitted 'we still have some way to go before we are
> performing at the level of some of our nearest neighbours' on the
> Continent. That is an understate ment. The UK is still considered the
> dustbin of Europe, with only Greece sending more refuse to landfill.
>
> Phil Conran, recycling development manager at Biffa - a major player in
> waste management along with Veolia and Sita - points out recycling has
> always had to pay its way, because firms are only prepared to collect
> what is cost-efficient to recycle. 'A key factor will be landfill tax
> going up,' he says. 'The key economic factors in recycling are the value
> of the materials recovered and the cost of landfill. Because the latter
> has been so cheap, there has been no financial benefit to the industry.'
>
> However, Conran says this is changing: 'The cost of oil means the cost
> of producing with virgin materials has gone up. There is now value in
> keeping materials out of landfill, so the economic equation stands up.'
>
> Landfill tax is currently £ 32 a tonne, but will increase by £ 8 a year
> until 2011. Experts say that, once the gate fees charged at landfill
> sites are added on top, the cost per tonne of waste could approach £ 100
> - a levy comparable to that charged in Germany a decade ago. Germany
> sends around 20 per cent of municipal waste to landfill, compared with
> almost two-thirds in the UK.
>
> Wrap, the government-funded agency, is keen to attract investors to the
> recycling industry. It estimates the sector is worth about £ 12bn but
> says that could reach £ 30bn within 15 years as UK and EU initiatives
> gather pace. Steve Creed, director of business growth at Wrap, says that
> once oil hit $75 a barrel - it is now around $119 - the cost of using
> recycled plastic was on a par with buying new resin: 'The value of the
> materials has started to have an impact on what people think, when five
> years ago it didn't.'
>
> Wrap points to success in recycling plastic bottles - with 182,000
> tonnes a year now collected, equal to a third of the bottles used in the
> UK. Part of that success must be linked to the raw material cost, with
> the price of HDPE (high density polyethylene) having doubled to £ 200 a
> tonne.
>
> Some retailers have complained that the reprocessing part of the
> recycling industry has not kept pace with collection, meaning efforts to
> introduce environment-friendly packaging are wasted. Consumers , too,
> have been disappointed to discover that not all the plastic they
> conscientiously sort into boxes is reincarnated because of the high
> costs of extraction.
>
> Creed says Wrap is now working on a strategy to address the problem.
> 'New technology is required to extract mixed plastics but it is close to
> being available. The challenge is to encourage investors to look at the
> sector. Waste has been seen as a 'dirty' area and more risky, but the
> market has doubled in size over the past few years.'
>
> The rising cost of extracting raw materials has also made the industry
> pay more attention to the value of metals locked away in old TV sets and
> computer monitors. The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)
> Directive aims to stop hazardous electricals such as cathode ray tubes,
> which contain lead, reaching landfill. But David Aitken, managing
> director at GreenWorld Electronics, says consumers and businesses are
> confused about how best to conform - and this ignorance has, according
> to Greenpeace, resulted in toxic waste washing up in scrapyards in
> Ghana, China and India. The campaign group is lobbying manufacturers to
> introduce global recycling schemes that would shoulder the burden of
> recycling old items, a plan Aitken supports: 'When a manufacturer sells
> a piece of equipment there should be an automatic returns policy,' he says.
>
> However, much of the activity in the sector is geared to tackling
> municipal waste, as this is more closely tied to EU directives - and
> because, as Mills says, 'if you go to a bank with a local authority
> contract, it is as good as a government bond'.
>
> NES has a £ 50m credit facility with German bank Nord, but Mills says
> the current climate is making it harder for companies with new
> technologies to get cash: 'There is a shortage of money in the system.
> We had an advantage because we agreed our facility before the credit
> crunch hit.'
>
>
>
> LOAD-DATE: August 11, 2008
>
>
>
>
> >
>
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