Interesting. Years ago, just for fun, I wrote up a short document with some of my predictions for the future. One of them was that our landfills would be 'mined' for all the stuff we threw out, that in the future will be economically retrievable. Didn't think in these terms though.
As an aside - this could go in the pet-peeve or even the rant thread, but that linked article gives an example of just how bad 'journalisim' is these days. One quote:
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A recent study by another group of experts in the field found that waste from one million Americans could contain as much as $13 million worth of metals.
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I read that, and realized nothing really useful was conveyed because no time period was specified. I could also say I have bench pressed thousands of pounds.
I went to another source, and they seemed to actually understand that (bold mine):
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A previous study, by Arizona State University, estimated that a city of 1 million inhabitants flushed about $13m (£8.7m) worth of precious metals down toilets and sewer drains each year.
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Ahhhh, now I feel better. Two words to complete the meaning, or even one word (annually), was that so hard?
Now I'm still on my first cup, but if I'm moving decimals correctly:
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The eight-year study, which involved monthly testing of treated sewage samples, found that 1kg of sludge contained about 0.4mg gold, 28mg of silver, 638mg copper and 49mg vanadium.
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1kg is 1000mg, and there are 1000mg in a gram, so 0.4mg of gold in 1kg of sludge would be... 0.4 ppm? Seems high to me. I suppose we could figure average sludge production per person, times 1 million, times 365 days and multiply by concentrations and value of the minerals to check that, but I'll pass (no pun intended).
-ERD50
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