Could $100 oil turn dumps into plastic mines?
M&S to charge 5p for plastic bagsFor global waste experts, not everyone's rubbish is the same: different sites have different potential and an individual country's or region's dumps show characteristics relating to the culture, historical development and economic climate.
"For example, landfills in Sweden dating from the 1960s have a lot of waste building material, reflecting the construction boom of that era," said Hogland.
"And other landfills have very specific waste - like those used by vehicle breakers - which have high concentrations of aluminium, copper and iron scrap."
"The value of these materials varies daily with global market prices, and today there is considerable demand for scrap metal from China, for instance."
But in Britain, it is in the millions of tonnes of plastic that people threw out in a pre-recycling era that experts see a potentially lucrative future.
That potential is clear to Chris Dow, managing director of the first so-called "closed loop" recycling plant in Britain able to recycle plastic bottles to a standard high enough for re-use as food packaging.
Closed Loop London is one of only six similar plants around the world in Austria, Germany, Mexico, Switzerland and the United States and processes polyethylene terephthalate plastic, used for water and drinks bottles, and high-density polyethylene . It has the capacity to recycle 35,000 tonnes each year.
A passionate recycler, Dow is convinced there is value buried in rubbish dumps, but angry that talk has turned to investing in technologies to harvest it rather than focusing on stopping more plastic from being dumped now.
"Just imagine the resources that are lying in those landfills - it could be incredible," he told Reuters.
"But the insane thing is that we are talking now about investing millions into tapping into a resource under the ground, when the real tragedy is that every week we're still dumping tonnes and tonnes of plastic into more landfills. It's an act of vandalism against the environment."
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