Published: 29 Aug 2011
There is a big potential to cut greenhouse
gases (GHGs) from municipal solid waste
management, according to a new report from
the European Environment
Agency (EEA). The report, 'Waste opportunities
– Past and future climate benefits from
better municipal waste management in Europe',
covers the EU-27 (excluding Cyprus), Norway
and Switzerland. It estimates that these
countries could make GHG savings of up to
78 million tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent
(CO2-e) by 2020, or 1.53 % of Europe's emissions
in 2008.
Biodegradable waste
sent to landfill produces methane when the
organic material decomposes anaerobically.
Although this potent GHG can be captured
and used to generate energy, much of it
escapes into the atmosphere where it has
a powerful climate forcing effect. Reducing
the amount of waste going to landfill is
therefore an important objective of EU waste
policies.
Nonetheless, waste volumes continue to rise
across the EU. The average EU citizen generated
468 kg of municipal solid waste in 1995,
which increased to 524 kg in 2008. This
could rise to 558 kg per person by 2020
unless effective policies are put in place
to reduce waste generation.
The report takes a ‘life-cycle approach’
to calculating emissions from waste, considering
all direct emissions from waste during processing
and transport. In addition, it also accounts
for emissions that are avoided in other
parts of the economy – for example, accounting
for the reduction of emissions when fossil
fuels are displaced by energy recovered
from waste. In this way, the method can
show the potential impacts of various waste
management strategies.
Especially recycling leads to avoided emissions.
This is because recycling materials from
municipal waste avoids emissions that would
have been generated in extracting and processing
virgin raw materials and these avoided emissions
are higher than the emissions caused by
the recycling processes. More details on
the calculations, assumptions and data are
available in this working paper.
Three different scenarios for 2020 illustrate
that the potential for GHG savings largely
depends on how countries implement EU waste
policies, in particular whether they meet
the EU Landfill Directive targets to reduce
landfill of biodegradable municipal waste.
Key findings from three different scenarios
In a business-as-usual scenario, net GHG
emissions from municipal waste management
would be cut by 44 million tonnes CO2-e
until 2020 compared to 2008. The two main
factors responsible for this improvement
are reduced methane emissions from landfill
and increased avoided emissions through
recycling.
If all countries fully meet the Landfill
Directive’s waste diversion targets, potential
life-cycle GHG emissions from municipal
waste management in 2020 could be cut by
62 million tonnes CO2-e, which equals 1.23
% of their total GHG emissions in 2008.
A complete ban on landfilling
could cut emissions even further, reducing
potential net emissions from waste management
in 2020 by 78 million tonnes CO2-e compared
to 2008. For the sake of comparison, this
is more than Hungary’s total emissions in
2008.
An analysis by the OECD
, following a somewhat different but also
life-cycle based approach, broadly confirms
the findings of the EEA work, namely, that
better management of municipal waste has
a significant potential to reduce GHG emissions.
Encouragingly, ever more municipal solid
waste is recycled and less is landfilled.
The EU recycled 17 % of its municipal solid
waste in 1995 and 40 % in 2008. In that
period, the amount going to landfill dropped
from 68 % to 40 %. These improvements have
already cut annual net GHG emissions by
48 million tonnes CO2-e between 1995 and
2008 in the EU-27, Norway and Switzerland.
Kitchen and garden waste is the biggest
fraction of municipal solid waste in most
EU countries. This represents a sizeable
opportunity to cut emissions through recycling
and energy recovery – in 2008, 44 million
tonnes of organic matter was composted,
emitting 1.4 million tonnes CO2-e. If that
had been subjected to anaerobic digestion,
producing useful biogas, it could have cut
2 million tonnes CO2-e from Europe’s emissions.
In addition to climate concerns, increasing
recycling and energy recovery also enhances
resource efficiency, a main goal of the
EU2020 strategy. However, even the most
effective waste management strategy generates
GHGs and causes the loss of resources. Authors
note that the best strategy is avoiding
generating waste in the first place.
