alt Hacker NewsThe thought occurred to me some 25+ years ago that today's landfills will be tomorrow's mines. I hope it isn't true but taking the very long view I'm afraid it will be.
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Today’s landfills are already used for natural gas generation.
A british inventor created a setup with two long vibrating plates with ferrofluid in between. A flaky powder made from garbage was dumped in on one side and came out the other end beautifully separated in many layers by density. (with one mixed layers in between that went back in at the beginning) Innitially he "knew" it was silly to use something as expensive as ferrofluid but planned to try other substances if it worked. It turned out the process produced a lot more ferrofluid than it used.
No one was interested in further research.
edit: I see some research is now happening.
We already mine landfills -- mostly for land reclamation but sometimes to recover resources.
In the longer run, when there's been more compaction, settling, and densification (and changes in what things are valuable), and more need to reclaim land that was previously landfilled, we will do this more.