Landfill mining!

A friend told me about this... did anyone else pick this up in the news?

Rubbish dumps are regarded by the recycling industry as an untapped source of riches, with an estimated 200 million tonnes of plastic buried as landfill since the late 1980s. At today's prices of £200 a tonne the discarded plastic has a value of about £40 billion. Alongside it are smaller, but still significant, quantities of valuable metals, including copper and aluminium. See The Times for full article..

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4510201.ece

So there is a cost in the packaging, then there is a cost for it to be taken away, then there will be a cost to dig it up....

Let's not bury these valuable resources in the first place - and PLEASE can product designers help by using plastics consistently and as efficiently as possible so that they are easier to recycle.