A decision support tool for enhanced landfill mining

Enhanced Landfill Mining has great potential to reduce the negative effects of landfills on both the environment and human health, to reclaim valuable land and provide a new source of raw materials. However, uncertainties in economic feasibility and environmental and social outcomes act as a bottleneck to its widespread uptake. Here, we present a decision support tool which aims to reduce these uncertainties by assisting site operators in assessing the economic, environmental and social consequences of a proposed project, while also evaluating the best technology train to use and the amount of rare earth elements present. Such a tool is the first of its kind and we propose its use as an initial assessment aid prior to more complex modelling of project feasibility in order to increase the uptake of enhanced landfill mining practices in the field of sustainable waste management.