> I wonder when in the West we'll start mining rubbish dumps

Never, because we have virtually unlimited space for landfills, and landfill tech has quietly been improving over the last few centuries, to the point that landfills are cheap, non-polluting, and entirely carbon neutral. Countries with less land mass (Europe et al) prefer incineration (mainly to save space, despite it being significantly worse for the environment and much more expensive (although with the newer energy reclamation efforts this is getting better)).

IMO it's not worth worrying about landfills too much. Household waste makes up about 3% of total landfill waste (when you add commercial/industrial/agricultural) in North America. You and your bun wrapper are truly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

This is backwards, it's not about eliminating the landfill, it's about recovering the materials which were previously not scarce but now are or will be soon.

> carbon neutral

No. Poorly separated wastes in landfill cause non-trivial methane emissions and other VOCs [0]. While leachate _may_ be captured, most of the time methane is definitely not.

[0] - https://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-information-about-landfill-ga...

I think it’s less about managing the environmental impact of landfills and more about eventually the concentration of desirable materials in landfills may end up higher than in known natural deposits. Or at least easier to refine and separate.

Landfills are likely chock full of Aluminum, Nickel-Cadmium, Lithium, copper, brass, and all sorts of useful metals and chemicals.

Sure, the grand majority is going to be food waste, but if you threw it all into an incinerator and melted down the ashes there is probably a decent blend of valuable material mixed in with the waste.