| UK landfills may be mined for plastic within the next decade, according to waste specialist Peter Mills.
He said plastic prices were fast reaching a point where mining landfill for the material for recycling was a viable option.
Mills from New Earth Solutions – a technology firm specialising in waste treatment and resource recovery – said plastics in well maintained landfill should be perfectly preserved.
He worked with a firm carrying out some remedial work on a US landfill site, which illustrated to him how robust the material is.
Mills told PRW.com that the technology to extract plastics from landfill was all there, “it is just a case of bringing it all together”.
While economics would drive the move, those extracting the material would have to wait until the methane gases generated by landfill sites had been depleted – around another 10 years.
Currently much of the methane is harvested to generate electricity and is classified as a sustainable power source.
Mills said it could potentially become feasible that plastics found in the ocean could also be removed and recycled. Environmentalists estimate that around 3m tonnes of plastic can be found floating in the Pacific Ocean. |
