Transforming dumps into gold mines. Experiences from Swedish case studies

摘要

This article discusses the transformation of landfills from dumps toan alchemist’s dream – gold mines – by highlighting five Swedishcase studies where the landfill has been extracted. It is shown thatlandfills are embedded in broader socio-technical systems, includingtechnology, policies, culture, norms, markets, and networks.These artifacts have aligned into mutual dependencies under thenotion that landfills are garbage dumps, which has entrapped thelandfill in the prevailing “dump regime”. At the present time there isa window of opportunity to escape the “dump regime.” Dumps arebeing challenged by the circular economy, which has establishedinstability in the regime. However, for landfills to transform into“gold mines” creative entrepreneurs with the capacity to understandthe emergent properties of deposition – i.e. giving rise to aresource base – will be key. For further transformation, specializedmining actors, collaboration and further exogenous changes suchas higher metal prices are necessary.