MHW Magazine News and stories from the Materials Handling Industry
will take place on Thursday 9 October 2008 at the Royal School of Arts in London, http://www.propubs.com/glm. The preliminary programme is given below.
Landfill mining is the process of reusing material which has previously been deposited in a landfill. Landfill mining has been around for about 60 years, but energy and commodity prices are now making landfill mining more economically feasible.
Landfill mining can be undertaken to provide a source of alternative fuel for different industrial processes (for example for the cement and lime industries), energy for waste-to-energy plants, construction materials (up to 25% of the contents of a landfill might typically be construction and demolition waste), plastics, and metals (with some landfills now being drilled like ore-bodies, to find out their content of gold, silver, aluminium and iron).
With some industries now being out-bid for higher-specification alternative fuels, the re-use of landfilled waste in these industries is now becoming a strong possibility. No wonder then that the event is subtitled 'Treasure from Trash.'
Landfill mining also has other economic benefits: Completely mined-out landfills can be reused for higher value activity ('brownfield' projects), or can even be re-used as landfills since landfill capacity is now at a premium and can be charged as such. Environmental benefits to landfill mining include theelimination of possible sources of effluent and the reduction or elimination of methane emissions.
The event will bring together experts on landfill mining from around the world, to give a full background to the subject, and then to examine in detail the possibilities, pitfalls and technical requirements to allow successful landfill mining. The event will also look at methane generation from landfills and its use as a fuel.
The Global Landfill Mining Conference will be of interest to engineers, planners, legislators, regulators, waste and environmental managers, landfill operators, academics, equipment producers, energy-, cement-, lime-, chemicals- construction materials-, metals-, and plastics producers.
The conference brochure is available from
