Better waste management can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this sector by 84%, highlights the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (Gaia) platform in a report released this Tuesday.
The sector represents 3.3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and a fifth of that of methane, a gas that can cause the same warming as CO2, although its life is shorter.
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“Introducing better waste management policies, such as sorting, recycling or composting, can reduce the sector’s total emissions by 84%,” the authors indicate. It’s as if the entire US car fleet is parked every year, they compare.
Emissions can be reduced in a number of ways: avoiding landfills that produce methane, using compost in soils to improve CO2 capture, and reducing emissions linked to the manufacture and transport of manufactured products whose use could be limited and recycled.
Gaia proposes measures to avoid food waste or ban single-use plastics, introduce organic waste collection and treatment or invest in waste recycling and composting systems.
“Better waste management is an obvious solution to climate change,” commented Neil Tangri, co-author of the report. “It doesn’t require new, expensive or flashy technology, just that we are more careful about what we produce and consume and what we do with those products when we no longer need them.”
Gaia hopes these issues can be discussed at the next UN climate conference (COP), which starts in a month in Egypt.
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