Landfills are becoming large concentrations of materials like plastic, aluminum and other. What part of the process of mining landfills and processing the materials for new products, makes mining raw materials from the earth and processing them cheaper?
In: Economics
Good aluminum or iron ore deposits are about 40-60% metal, with the remainder being oxygen atoms and maybe a bit of other simple minerals.
Municipal solid waste is about 9% metals, and that 9% is a mix of aluminum, steel, zinc, copper, tin, etc. It’s mixed in with huge amounts of organic matter, plus lots of other contaminants. And the metals aren’t pure metals: they’re usually alloys with a wide range of added elements.
The chemistry needed to separate such tiny amounts of metal from such a complex molecular stew would be really difficult.
It’s much easier to separate out the metal before it gets mixed into the trash, which is what recycling is all about.
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