By Futurist Thomas Frey
When Trash Becomes the Most Valuable Resource on Earth
My recent column on robotic earthworms mining landfills has generated intense response, with many questioning whether the concept is actually feasible. The skepticism is understandable—we’re talking about autonomously burrowing through compacted garbage, identifying and separating dozens of material types, and extracting valuable resources from what we’ve treated as worthless waste for generations.
But here’s what the skeptics are missing: the physics works, the economics are compelling, and the environmental imperative is absolute. We’ve buried trillions of dollars of valuable materials in landfills worldwide. The person who figures out how to automatically recycle the world’s trash won’t just build a profitable business—they’ll win a Nobel Prize and fundamentally reshape how civilization manages resources.
Let me walk you through exactly how this could work, what still needs to be invented, and why this might be the most important engineering challenge of the next decade.
Continue reading… “The Robotic Earthworm Solution: Why Automated Landfill Mining Will Win Someone a Nobel Prize”