Economic analysis of recovering recyclable materials from old landfills: Evaluating a landfill-mining project in Belgium | Wirtschaftliche Rückgewinnung von Wertstoffen aus Deponien – Untersuchung eines Deponierückbauprojekts in Belgien

In the following study, the classification model for primary resources “United Nations Framework Classification for Fossil Energy and Mineral Reserves and Resources 2009” (UNFC- 2009) is applied to a landfill - mining project in Belgium in order to identify the deposited materials as anthropogenic “resources” (reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction in the foreseeable future) or “reserves” (current economic extraction possible) Further, critical factors with regard to the project’s economic viability , and to the application of UNFC-2009 in general, are discussed.Based on data from a landfill-mining project in Belgium, the focus of the evaluation was set on technological options and economics, with a Material Flow Analysis quantifying relevant material and energy flows and a Discounted Cash Flow analysis including Monte Carlo simulations, exploring the project’s economic viability, including the saving potential of greenhouse gas emissions as non-monetary effect.Four scenarios have been investigated, representing different alternatives for the combustible waste fraction’s thermal treatment (on-site vs. off-site incineration) and for specific stakeholder interests (public vs. private perspective). The Net Present Values were found to be negative for all four scenarios, implying that none of the project’s variations is currently economically viable.Main drivers of the economic performance are parameters related to the thermal treatment of the combustible waste fraction as well as to the sales of recovered metals. Based on the theoretically necessary futureprice increases for non-ferrous metals to make the project economically, the scenarios resulted in different final resourceclassification, as the expectations to reach the cut-off values within the upcoming 20 years differ for each scenario. Although the applicability of UNFC-2009 to landfill mining has been proven successfully, further research is needed to define specific, quantifiable criteria for categorizing various kinds of anthropogenic resources under UNFC-2009. This will improve the estimates of global total resources stocks and their extractablefractions by considering various boundary conditions, allowing for fair comparisons between naturally occurring and anthropogenic resource deposits.