ENHANCED LANDFILL MINING, THE MISSING LINK TO A CIRCULAR ECONOMY 2.0?

The transition towards a resource-efficient, climate
neutral and circular economy is one of the Grand Societal
Challenges of today, as recently endorsed by the European
Commission in its European Green Deal (EC 2019). As part
of this Green Deal the Commission will also launch a new
Circular Economy Action Plan (foreseen in March 2020),
which will present a “sustainable products” policy that prioritises reducing and reusing materials before actually recycling them, moving up the Waste Hierarchy. Undoubtedly
this is a step in the right direction.
Nevertheless, this shift towards a more pro-active Circular Economy vision does not yet address the question of
what Europe and other countries in the world will do with
the vast amounts of industrial and consumer waste that
have been disposed of in waste dumps and landfills over
the past 100 years. In this context Enhanced landfill mining
(ELFM) has been proposed as an “out of the box” approach
to address the dark side of the Circular Economy vision: i.e.
how can we deal with the waste of the past, irrespective of
the urgent need to avoid new waste creation and disposal
in the future?

向资源高效型、气候中性的循环经济转型，是当前全球面临的重大社会挑战之一，这一定位已于近期由欧盟委员会在其《欧洲绿色协议》（EC 2019）中正式确认。作为该绿色协议的配套举措，欧盟委员会还将推出全新的循环经济行动计划（预计于2020年3月发布），该计划将提出“可持续产品”政策，优先在实际回收环节之前缩减材料消耗并推动材料复用，从而向上优化废物层级体系。毋庸置疑，这是一次符合发展方向的积极尝试。
然而，这一转向更具前瞻性循环经济愿景的变革，尚未解决欧洲乃至全球其他国家该如何处理过去百年间被填埋于垃圾堆场与填埋场的海量工业与消费废弃物的问题。在此背景下，强化填埋场开采（Enhanced Landfill Mining，ELFM）被提出作为一种“突破性”解决方案，用以应对循环经济愿景的另一面隐忧：即在未来亟需避免新增废弃物产生与处置的当下，我们该如何妥善处置过往遗留的废弃物？