how can it be determined if using a landfill is less costly than developing a new process to reuse the stuff?

Question

Landfills are very costly and harmful whereas processing the stuff dumped would result in huge profits if a good process is applied. Why would anyone think landfills are nessisary in an adavnced culture?

Answer 1

There is a cost of recycling: And not every item can be recycled.

Have you ever had recycled food?

So, lets evaluate the costs of recycling: A city has to design and implement a recyclying program. The program has to be bid out to the highest bidder (for cash revenue purposes); The winner will send out recycling bins to everybody in the city. The homeowner will throw their recyclable trash into the bin and once a week the company will pick it up. They then have to sort through the material. Then they have to transport the material to an end user that pays bulk pricing for it. If the cost of collection is more than the revenue generated, then the company will go out of business.

Presuming that they make money, the recycler uses the material and generates a new product, which is in turn sold back to the consumer. If the cost of the recycled material is more than a new material, then the recycler will go out of business.


Landfills are necessary because all materials are not able to be recycled. So, what can be done with the landfills?

They themselves can be recycled. After the life of the landfill is completed, they are generally capped with recycled dirt. Grass and trees are planted and they can make a great city park, baseball fields, etc... And, by installing systems to capture the methane gases generated by the degradation of the materials in the landfills, they can sell that material to an end user. Ultimately, all the materials in the landfill may decompose (plastics may take thousands of years), and the surface is reused.