Mining landfills better than digging new mines?

Sometime ago I read or heard about landfills being mined for gold in Japan

Looking into landfill mining, I found a large number of sites, mostly positive.  One I found a few weeks ago is Landfill Miners.

A search for “mining gold from landfill” or “mining copper from landfill” turned up a variety of sites about landfill mining, mostly positive.  It seems more recent articles are more positive than older articles.  Many projects reclaim a large variety of materials, many of which can be sold for less than mining the original materials.  Aluminum and copper are major materials in this category.

"Free marketers" deceive and oppress again

Large banks are buying commodity warehouses and then moving goods from one warehouse to another to increase their profits.  Apparently some international agreement allows them to do this.  Although this movement only adds a fraction of a cent to a beverage in an aluminum can, the huge number of cans used puts this cost to consumers in the hundreds of billions.  What's this about "you'll get ahead by hard work"?  I guess it is hard work to think of schemes to "deceive and oppress the public"*.

See "A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold", David Kocieniewski, New York Times,2013-07-20, also reprinted in Star Tribune, "Banks schemes adding hidden costs to consumers", 2013-07-20

* See "The Invisible Adam Smith"