Holistic assessment of a landfill mining pilot project in Austria: Methodology and application
Published online on May 10, 2016
Abstract
Basic technical and economic examinations of Austrian mass waste landfills, concerning the recovery of secondary raw materials, have been carried out by the ‘LAMIS – Landfill Mining Austria’ pilot project for the first time in Austria. A main focus of the research – the subject of this article – was the first devotion of a pilot landfill to an integrated ecological and economic assessment so that its feasibility could be verified before a landfill mining project commenced. A Styrian mass waste landfill had been chosen for this purpose that had been put into operation in 1979 and received mechanically–biologically pre-treated municipal waste till 2012. The whole assessment procedure was divided into preliminary and main assessment phases to evaluate the general suitability of a landfill mining project with little financial and human resource expense. A portfolio chart, based on a questionnaire, was created for the preliminary assessment that, as a result, has provided a recommendation for subsequent investigation – the main assessment phase. In this case, specific economic criteria were assessed by net present value calculation, while ecological or socio-economic criteria were rated by utility analysis, transferring the result into a utility–net present value chart. In the case of the examined pilot landfill, assessing the landfill mining project produced a higher utility but a lower net present value than a landfill leaving-in for aftercare. Since no clearly preferable scenario could be identified this way, a cost–revenue analysis was carried out in addition that determined a dimensionless ratio: the ‘utility – net present value quotient’ of both scenarios. Comparing this quotient showed unmistakably that in the overall assessment, ‘leaving the landfill in aftercare’ was preferable to a ‘landfill mining project’ in that specific case.