Could $100 oil turn dumps into plastic mines?
Sparked by surging oil, a dramatic rise in the value of old plastic is encouraging waste companies across the world to dig for buried riches in rotting rubbish dumps.
M&S to charge 5p for plastic bagsLong a symbol of humanity's throw-away culture, existing landfill sites are now being viewed as mines of potential which as the world population grows could also help bolster the planet's dwindling natural resources.
"By 2020 we might have nine billion people on the planet, we could have a very big middle class driving millions more cars, and we could be in a really resource-hungry world with the oil price climbing and a supply situation in Libya, Russia and Saudi where natural gas is limited," said Peter Jones, one of Britain's leading experts on waste management.
"It is those drivers, those conditions, which will encourage the possibility of landfill mining."
In Britain alone, experts say landfill sites could offer up an estimated 200 million tonnes of old plastic - worth up to 60 billion pounds at current prices - to be recovered and recycled, or converted to liquid fuel.
As many oil analysts predict oil prices will stay above $100 a barrel, waste experts in America, Europe and across Asia have been conducting pilot projects to recoup old plastic and other waste materials.
Prices for high quality plastics such as high-density polyethelenes have more than doubled to between 200 and 300 pounds per tonne, from just above 100 pounds a year ago, according to experts in the waste industry.
With this in mind, leaders of the world's waste management industry are planning to come together in London in October for what is being billed as the first "global landfill mining" conference.
"Once plastic is in a landfill site, it pretty much sits there doing nothing - and the beauty of that is that you're able to go back and recapture it in the future," said Peter Mills, a director of waste and recycling company New Earth Solutions, who is scheduled to speak at the conference.
"There are some really buoyant prices around because plastic is all manufactured from oil, so as the raw price of oil goes up, every commodity derived from it goes up accordingly."
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