Can waste management be hailed as a climate change mitigation leader?

Abstract

On Earth day in 2016, 195 nations signed the Paris Agreement in a historical move to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and control the risks of climate change on the planet. In its 2018 report, ‘Global Warming of 1.5 °C’, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned the public more clearly than ever that there were only 12 years for global warming to be kept within 1.5°C, beyond which even a rise of 0.5°C would significantly increase the risks of floods, drought, extreme heat and poverty for millions of people (EC-IPPC, 2018). The latter report immediately attracted global attention on its release, and warned the world that urgent and unprecedented actions are required to reach the climate change mitigation and adaption targets, among which improved waste management can be a feasible and affordable option. It was estimated that 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-equivalent) GHG emissions were generated from the waste sector in 2016, which was about 5% of global emissions (Kaza et al., 2018). The emissions are expected to reach 2.6 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent by 2050 if no improvement is made in the waste industry. Although the current 5% fraction is relatively less pronounced compared with the power generation and transportation sectors, we believe that the waste management community needs to stand up right now to take leadership in an effort to develop climate smart waste management in order to mitigate and adapt to the climate change. As the young Swedish climate activist Ms Greta Thunberg said, ‘you re never too small to make a difference’.